Volume 3, Issue 91: One Wing

"You were a blessing and I was a curse."

Here is a button where you can subscribe to this newsletter now, if you have not previously done so. I do hope that you enjoy it. Also, I know this is out unusually early today but I’m going to be away from my computer all day. I hope the ping it makes when it hits your inbox does not wake you up.

Tomorrow, my older son William turns 10. 10! That is a full decade in the books. This was him 10 years ago:

And this is him now:

His birth was a tumultuous one, for all of us, but mostly for son and mother. The first time I ever saw him, he was literally airborne; he ended up breaking his collarbone on the way out. (My wife’s story is hers to tell, but the quick version is that it was a situation where everyone had been planning on getting the drugs, and then the drugs didn’t come, and then the world burst into flames.) He was born at St. Luke’s Hospital near Columbus Circle in Manhattan right three days before Thanksgiving; I remember the cab driver having to navigate a street corner where a Snoopy balloon sagged, waiting to be blown up to delight Matt Lauer and Ann Curry. The weirdest thing was that there were paparazzi waiting for us when we got out of the taxi at the hospital. Beyonce was pregnant at the time, and her people had leaked to the paparazzi that the child who would become Blue Ivy Carter (who has already won a freaking Grammy; get on it, William) would be delivered at St. Luke’s. This did not end up being the case—she was born at Lenox Hill, a full month-and-a-half later—but the paps were still outside the joint all hours of the night, including when we got there at 2 a.m. I can truthfully say that one of the last things I did before I became a father was “have a professional gossip photographer look actively irritated that I was not Jay-Z.”

We lived in New York City for a year-and-a-half with William, before moving to Georgia in June 2013, and it’s understandable, but still sort of a bummer, that he doesn’t remember anything from New York. One of his favorite things to do as a toddler was to go to Brooklyn Bridge Park and watch helicopters land in lower Manhattan, and he went everywhere with his babysitter (who ended up being a pretty successful actress after we moved): He has zero memory of either today. He likes to brag to his friends that he was born in New York City, but it’s just a pose. He complains if the temperature gets under 60. He’s a Southern boy.

Sunday concludes his first 10 years on this planet. I find myself, first and foremost, grateful that he has been healthy and safe throughout this time: To see him run across a field, throwing a football back and forth with his friends, tackling his little brother, stuffing pizza in his face, it’s all a gift, and one I won’t take for granted. But the first decade is nothing—nothing—like the second decade, or any other decade. I will leave the question of the most transformative decade once you get into your 50s and higher to those of you who have reached such platinum status—and I’m legitimately curious—but so far, the Rankings Of Formative Decades has a clear, obvious formation. Here’s mine:

1. 10-20 (1985-1995). I began my second decade desperately wanting Glenn Brummer’s autograph and playing with the Letter People. Over the next 10 years, I would go through puberty, grow a mullet, lose my virginity, become obsessed with rock music, go to high school, decide I wanted to be a writer, vote, move away, go to college, get a job, almost get married, discover alcohol, smoke some pot, lost two grandparents, meet Lou Henson, play a baseball game at Busch Stadium, briefly try to grow a mustache, question everything my parents believed, ultimately realize how much I missed them, end up remembering almost nothing what my life was like when the decade began.

2. 30-40 (2005-2015). I began my fourth decade engaged to be married and having just started a new website about sports that I constantly spammed all my friends links to, begging them to read it. I’d end up unengaged, with all sorts of madness and warmth in the wake of that, and that site ended up exploding and finally giving the career break I’d been waiting a decade for. By the end of the decade, I was married, had two sons and was living in Athens, Georgia, a town I’d never visited and had barely heard of at the beginning of the decade. Packed a lot in this one.

3. 20-30 (1995-2005). I’d get engaged and have that one end too (though it happened first), I’d graduate from college, I’d move to Los Angeles, and then St. Louis, and then finally New York City, the most momentous decision of the whole decade. This was also the decade when I struggled the most professionally, when I learned I wasn’t the hot shit I thought I was. It was also the most tumultuous political decade, at least until the most recent one. The Black Table began during this time, which might have been the most pivotal moment, and the very end, that sports website launched, though it wasn’t until the decade after this one that anyone noticed. I also lost another grandparent.

4. 0-10 (1975-1985). I mostly just remember listening to Jack Buck call Cardinals games on the radio this entire decade.

I’ll hold off on putting the current decade in the rankings: We do, after all, have four more years to go. But it’s difficult to fathom it besting the importance of the second decade, the one William’s about to go through, unless I die, which I suppose is always a possibility. The world is very simple for him right now, even if he doesn’t realize it, even if it doesn’t seem that way to him at all. But it’s about to get crazy for him. Not only will he not recognize the kid he is today in 10 years, he will likely spend those days, and many of the days after them, longing for that simplicity, wishing he could return to that moment when he was 10, when the whole wide world spread out in front of him and his life could go in infinite directions. He will wish this moment could be frozen in time.

But when I look back at it all, I find myself grateful for my mistakes and missteps, just as he will surely someday be grateful for his. He has so much to learn, so many places to go, so many people to meet, so many dumb decisions to make, so much love and hope and warmth and setbacks and despair and grief. That he gets to go through all of it. It makes me wistful, but it also makes me feel fortunate that I got to do it, and beyond excited for him that he gets to—that I get to watch him tackle the world, and the world gets to find out what he’s all about too. (I feel the same way about his younger brother, but he’s got two-and-a-half years left in his own first decade: I’ll surely write all this again then.) His life is about to get serious now: It’s about to matter.

I cannot wait. I’m scared for him, for what’s coming, but I’m happy for him, because I know he’ll be able to handle it. I find myself proud of him already. He’s 10 years old and just getting started. There’s a whole world out there, kid. Let’s go.

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

1. New York Is the Last Sports Town Anyone Should Want to Play In, New York. I’ve been thinking this for a while, and while I totally understand and even agree with some of the opposing arguments, this is as clearly as I can state the case. That’s the goal with anything: Just to state the case clearly.

2. Beto O’Rourke Is Generation X’s Last Chance, Medium. One last doomed march up Beto Hamburger Hill.

3. The Five Best Pitchers Who Haven’t Won a Cy Young Yet, MLB.com. Got some more Waino in this one. He should have won one a decade ago.

4. MVPs, Ranked, MLB.com. We update this one every year.

5. The Five Best Players Who Haven’t Won an MVP Yet, MLB.com. Someone out of Juan Soto, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Fernando Tatis Jr. is going to end up getting shut out for life.

6. Your Five Friday Lists for November 15-19, Medium. Quick, funny and enjoyable to write, I don’t know if people like it or not, but I’m going to keep doing them simply because I like it.

7. Julio Lugo and What It Means to Have an “Early” Death, Medium. This was a good idea, but maybe not one I executed all that well.

8. The Thirty: The Biggest Questions Facing Every Team Heading into the Hot Stove, MLB.com. If we end up getting a Hot Stove, anyway.

PODCASTS

The Long Game With LZ and Leitch, discussing Jon Gruden’s lawsuit, New York City’s desirability as a free agent destination and what it means to root for a rebuilding team.

Grierson & Leitch, discussing “Passing,” “Red Notice” and “Belfast.”

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, we recapped the Tennessee game and previewed the Charleston Southern game.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Have Covid? Don’t Blame Anyone,” Choire Sicha, New York. There are times I think Choire Sicha is the only sane person on the planet. (And that’s terrifying!)

Also, in the wake of the legally-understandable-but-still-despairing Kyle Rittenhouse verdict on Friday, I cannot recommend this Paige Williams piece from June on the incident in The New Yorker enough.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Summer Babe (Winter Version),” Pavement. Hell yes I’m seeing the new tour. This is my favorite Pavement song, which hardly makes me unique, but seriously, when I close my eyes and think of college, this is the song I think of, even though I didn’t actually listen to Pavement in college. If that makes sense. You should know that the way Stephen Malkmus looks in this video is exactly what I look like in my self-image of the time (though I was never, ever that scrawny).

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

I was Dashman this week. Find your inner Dashman. (And make sure you give that inner Dashman plenty of Tylenol and fluids.)

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will