Volume 3, Issue 83: We're Just Friends
"I can't imagine ever being apart. I'll come back to you."
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This weekend, I’m going to be in Cleveland. (I’m actually in the air flying there right now, the very second I send this. Look up, you can see me, I’m the guy in the airplane.) This trip is a Christmas present. My older son William, who will turn 10 in November, has become a diehard Cleveland Browns fan, a particularly cruel fate, and one that, because I as his father have allowed it to happen, could lead to me being arrested for child abuse in at least one-third of the states in this country. He started rooting for the Browns because he loves former Georgia Bulldogs running back Nick Chubb, whom the Browns selected in the second round of the 2018 NFL Draft, and William vowed that he would cheer for whatever team drafted him. He has gone as Nick Chubb for Halloween for three consecutive years and I have no doubt he will do so for a fourth.
He now is a Browns obsessive, with detailed depth charts and all sorts of hot takes about their defensive backfield, and that was all he wanted from Santa for Christmas: Tickets to a Cleveland Browns game. If you think this is a strange thing for a child to ask for as his Christmas present, remember that this was last December, when there weren’t many sporting events even available for him to attend. (As well as a presumption, not entirely incorrect but also not as lock-certain as we thought it would be back then, that it’d be safer for us to go to next September.) Knowing my son: It’s the most logical thing in the world for him to want.
My oldest son loves sports—more than I do, I think. He wakes up every morning and immediately goes to the MLB app on Roku to watch the Cardinals highlights. (A by-product of the draconian early bedtime foisted upon him.) He watches “SportsCenter” and “Quick Pitch” and “College Football Final” on repeat. He fills notebooks with stats and stories and predictions. He plays every sport available to him, from baseball to basketball to soccer to tennis, and he is constantly organizing playground games and keeping detailed score. He loved the sleepover McCallie Sports Camp he went to last summer so much that sometimes he’ll be staring off into space for a second, and I’ll ask him what he’s thinking about, and he’ll say, “Oh, I’m just dreaming about being back at McCallie.” I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that he has sports on his mind every minute of every day.
As tends to be the case in families, though, his younger brother Wynn, who is seven, could not care about sports one whit. He will humor his brother and his father, but I’m not sure he’s ever sat through a whole sporting event he didn’t play in. (And even then, just barely.) He has more worldly, creative pursuits. He loves to draw—a great way to keep him occupied on days, like this week, when he’s unexpectedly home from school for a day as they contact trace his class, a super-fun thing to still have happening, is to give him a list of 20 items and tell him to draw a picture of each one—and do construction projects, including chemistry experiments and creating robots out of plastic bottles, whiffle balls and duct tape.
Wynn is weird, in that delightful way smart, creative children are weird: He is always attacking the world at strange angles that don’t seem to make sense on the surface but end up working out for him. He is uniquely himself in every possible way. He has been wearing his clothes backwards to school for three years now, to the point that many of his friends now do the same thing. He is confident and (often foolishly) self-assured and stubborn as a mule. He is, in many ways, an amalgam of many personality attributes I wish I had but do not.
Both of my children are intelligent and curious in that way that can be breathtaking to watch. They are both reaching that age where they are still unquestionably kids but also developing their own personalities and viewpoints that aren’t just different than those of their parents, but unique and independent and fascinating on their own. I find myself wanting to just listen to them talk sometimes, rapt in the way they see the world, often surprising myself in how much I end up learning from them. The kids are now old enough that I enjoy hanging out with them as human beings as much as—and often, more than—I do being their parent. They’re so smart that sometimes I feel sort of guilty telling them what to do all the time.
But they are going to keep growing up, and they are going to keep doing so quickly. And that’ll end up with them having a lot less time and patience with their father. You already see it. William sprints ahead of me on walks to school and is increasingly embarrassed when I unload all my Dad Jokes on all the other kids. (See: My complete compendium of Dad jokes.) Wynn once sprinted across the gym and leapt into my arms when I picked him up from school; now he frowns the second I show up, seeing me as the narc who has shown up to take him away from his friends. This will only get worse, as any parent with children older than mine already is painfully aware of. (And nodding along with, reading this.) One of the first things I discovered when I first became a parent was that I had a sudden overpowering urge to apologize to my parents for literally everything. I had no idea how much I’d surely wounded them by choosing my friends over them, by questioning everything they thought and believed, by moving away from them without much of a second thought. When did I start the process of drifting away from them? How old was I? I bet it was when I was William’s age or Wynn’s age. They are well on their way now.
I find myself, then, trying to find ways to hold on, while I can. I will confess that I suspect it will be easier with William, with weekends like this one in Cleveland. Perhaps sports’ best quality is its ability to connect people who otherwise struggle to connect, which describes just about every teenager and young adult and their parents I’ve ever met. That was how I stayed connected with my father—you might have read about this—during my most wayward years. Even when he had no idea what I was doing, even when we were at our furthest apart, we always talked about the Cardinals and the Illini. And we always will.
Wynn will be tougher, not because we’re not as close, but because there is not that immediate social lubricant—and when he’s a teenager and I’m somehow 87 percent lamer than I am right now, we’ll both desperately need it. I bet we find something. Maybe it’ll be museums. Maybe it’ll be art films. Maybe we should start fishing. Maybe opera? I would love it if he ended up a musician; it would rule to have a son in a rock band. (Famous last words.) We’ll get there; he is only seven, after all. But as I get older, I find myself more and more desperate to hang onto these little trips, whether they’re to Cleveland or St. Louis or New York or just to a fancy restaurant, just the two of us. We’ll find something.
We’ll have to. As any parent can tell you, sometimes it can feel like they’re slipping a little further away from you bit by bit each day. I’m going to appreciate every second in Cleveland this weekend. These boys won’t always want to take trips like this with their father. There’s a whole world out there waiting for them. I can’t wait for them to see it. But I’m going soak up every second of this, while I can. Before they have far more thrilling travels than the ones they’ll take with their dad. Before they move along on their own journeys. Before they’re gone.
Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.
What Sports Learned About the Pandemic It Already Thinks Is Over, New York. The pandemic is over in sports, hadn’t you heard?
Widespread Sports Betting Is Going to End in Disaster, The Atlantic. I hadn’t written for The Atlantic in a long time, so I was downright delighted to get to put this piece together.
Why Kids Can Dream of Halloween Again, Medium. No bigger news in this house this week than the news that Pfizer is submitting its kids vaccine data to the FDA. About freaking time.
Fun Little Takeaways From the 2020 MLB Leaderboard, MLB.com. Tommy Edman has black ink on his Baseball Reference page, who knew?
Postseason Milestones on the Line in 2021, MLB.com. Randy Arozarena is on a ton of leaderboards from last season alone.
How “Sopranos” Characters Would Handle the Pandemic, Medium. This was a good idea that I unfortunately did not have the time nor energy to execute correctly. Alas.
The Thirty: Players Set to Bounce Back in 2021, MLB.com. I still believe in Miles Mikolas.
The Final Internet Nostalgia, Medium. This particular rubric was fun, but when you’re writing about Alex from Target, you’re probably getting close to being out of ideas.
PODCASTS
Grierson & Leitch, discussing “Cry Macho,” “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and “The Nowhere Inn.”
Seeing Red, Bernie and I discussed this undeniably true fact:
Waitin' Since Last Saturday, we reviewed the South Carolina win and previewed Vanderbilt.
LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK
“The Unbelievable Grimness of HermanCainAward,” Lili Loofbourow, Slate. This touches on a piece I wrote a while back but digs in deeper, and smarter, than I did. I have no idea how this piece ended in an almost optimistic way, but it somehow did.
BOOK I’VE READ THAT YOU SHOULD READ
“Find You First,” Linwood Barclay. I will confess that I did not know Linwood Barclay until he praised How Lucky, but that’s because I’m a fool. This is his most recent book, but I’ve read three now, and they’re just pure pleasure. He writes one of these a year and someday I’m gonna get caught up on all of them.
ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!
Write me at:
Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603
CURRENTLY LISTENING TO
“Lay Low,” My Morning Jacket. Every five years or so, I go into a stretch where I listen to nothing but My Morning Jacket for about a month, and then I don’t listen to them again for five years. It’s like cicadas. Anyway, I’m in one of those modes right now.
Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.
Hang with the bros while you can …
Have a great weekend, all.
Best,
Will
Wonderful tribute to your kids - I loved it and it made me wish that my Dad had possessed the ability to be flexible and see my unique, orthogonal traits as something worth celebrating. Kudos, Will.