Volume 4, Issue 49: Paul Goldschmidt

"An MVP season for the veteran slugger."

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My son Wynn and I went to go see the Harry Potter Exhibition in Atlanta this week. He has read all seven of the Harry Potter books, and I’m taking him to New York this summer (the first time he will have ever been there) to see the “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” play on Broadway. The Atlanta exhibition is mostly about the films rather than the books, which turned out to be sort of perfect for Wynn, who in all honesty only knows Daniel Radcliffe because he saw him play Weird Al: Everything at the exhibition had heretofore only existed in his imagination, which meant he spent most of the time saying things like, “Oh, so that’s what they made a portkey look like!” or “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t look like Gilderoy Lockhart at all.” We had a blast. My personal favorite part was when the little cupboard under the stairs that Harry has to stay in when he’s living with the Dursleys. Wynn thought Harry’s room was pretty nice, all told.

Anyway, we were driving back to Athens from Atlanta when Wynn, who (along with his brother) just got his own room for Christmas and therefore apparently has a lot of time late at night now to stare up at the ceiling and think, started getting existential. We were talking about going to New York for the play next summer, and how he’d never been to New York even though both of his parents used to live there and his older brother was born there.

“Isn’t it kind of crazy that you’re from Illinois, and Mom’s from Georgia, and you met in New York?” he said. “Like, what if you hadn’t? Would I even be here right now?”

I thought about it for a second. “I guess you wouldn’t,” I said. “And I guess I wouldn’t be in Georgia either.”

Little wheels started to spin in his head. “So then where would I be?” I told him I didn’t know. “Do you think maybe I’d be a plant? Or maybe a mosquito? My friend Bruce really likes chickens. Maybe I’d be a chicken.”

“Maybe you’d be a chicken,” I said.

“That’s so crazy,” he said.

“You know what’s crazier?” I said, starting to get into this. “What if my parents had never met, if Baba would have gone away to the Air Force and never came back, or if G-Ma decided she didn’t want to wait for him? Then I would never exist. Then where would you be?”

“Whoa,” he said.

“And for that matter,” I said, on a roll now, “what if my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather had never met, or my great-great-great-grandmother and my great-great-great grandfather had hated each other? Then their kids wouldn’t have existed, and then their kids wouldn’t have existed, and none of us would be here. All it would have taken was just one random thing not to work out exactly as it did, and none of us would have existed, and the world would be entirely different.”

“That’s so crazy,” he said again.

“So in that way, when you think about it,” I said, “it’s a miracle that any of us exist at all.”

This made Wynn smile. “That makes me a miracle,” I said. He paused for a second and then gave a huge grin. “I guess that means everybody is!”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said.

As we close out 2022 and turn the calendar to 2023, I think this is my little wistful New Years message: Every single thing you do this year, that I do this year, that any of us do this year, no matter how small, in its own way will change the course of human history forever. It all matters. Our lives can often seem simultaneously overwhelming and inconsequential, and it can feel like the stresses of our lives, that our fears and worries, can ultimately add up to nothing: That we’re here, and we’re gone, and that’s it, what was that all for? But everything we do, every minute, changes everything. Everything that gave us this life is a miracle; everything we do in it only sets the stage for more of them. Wynn’s right: That’s so crazy. What a bunch of lucky schmucks we all are.

As always, the last newsletter of the year is a clip show, when we look back at the year through the eyes of this newsletter. 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 2022. So here’s a month-by-month look back at the highlights and lowlights.

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:

• On recapping 2021.

• On “Impossible Germany,” and the search for perfection.

• On remembering perfect sports moments from your childhood.

• On your first job, and how it’ll change everything.

• On the pleasures of a famously stubborn soloist learning to enjoy being part of a team.

Publications:

• On Jared Schmeck (remember him?) being a bad dad, for Medium.

• I interviewed Chris Herring on his terrific Knicks book, for New York.

• The Fall of Aaron Rodgers, for GQ.

• Eugene Goodman Is America at Its Best, for Medium.

FEBRUARY

Newsletters:

• On Mark Whicker, and retiring after decades of just doing your thing.

• On hallucinogenic mushrooms.

• On how much your family changes when you are away.

• On trying to keep your head, and your children’s heads, when the world brings terror.

Publications:

• I wrote an obit for Tom Brady’s career (whoops!), for GQ.

• I interviewed Chuck Klosterman about his book The Nineties, for GQ.

• The NFL always gets away with it, for The Washington Post.

• The increasing silliness of sports Covid restrictions, for New York.

• We should just sort generations by who was President when people were born, for Medium.

MARCH

Newsletters:

• On Ice-T on my Honey Nut Cheerios box.

• On still using Microsoft Word, Yahoo Mail and baseball scorebooks.

• On tattoos.

• On Taylor Hawkins and dying young.

Publications:

• I got to write the “Baseball Is Back” story once the lockout ended, for MLB.com.

• Why aren’t we talking about Brittney Griner? for New York.

• The Vexing Problem of the Problematic Obit, for Medium.

• My Annual Just-Trying-to-Be-Funny Sweet Sixteen Rooting Guide, for New York.

• The Worst Person in the World is a great Gen-X film, for Medium.

APRIL

Newsletters:

• On the beginning of baseball season.

• On the Daily Illini, and listening to the kids.

• On turning things in on time.

• On the limits of Generation-X nostalgia.

• On being alone and looking out windows in a New York City hotel room.

Publications:

• How much are the Bills worth to Buffalo, really? for New York.

• Just ignore Twitter, please, for Medium.

MAY

Newsletters:

• On the paperback release of How Lucky.

• On appreciating the first “normal” school year, “post”-Covid.

• On what will last, long-term, from the pandemic.

• On the kids having to save us, post-Uvalde.

Publications:

• Baseball’s Unwritten Rules are just excuses to get in a fight, for New York.

• Stop yelling at journalists for holding onto their scoops, for Medium.

• The unique awfulness of Yankee Stadium’s “Jackie” chants, for New York.

JUNE

Newsletters:

• On the eternal wonder of space travel.

• On summer camp.

• On finally getting Covid.

• On protest, and what it can do, and what it can’t.

Publications:

• The Chattanooga shooting is actually the bigger shooting problem, for Medium.

• Leave Jim Kaat alone, for New York.

• Why people are less angry about baseball change, for The Washington Post.

• On LIV Golf, for New York.

• Nobody cares about Elvis anymore, for Medium.

JULY

Newsletters:

• On those who fight forward progress, in sports and elsewhere.

• On finding reasons to stay positive.

• On steering into the Dad Guy skid.

• On taking pride in your work.

• On the first day of school.

Publications:

• The early days of the pandemic are getting memory holed, for Medium.

• All-Stars, Ranked, for MLB.com.

• My Derek Jeter Story, for New York.

• I interviewed Mark Leibovich about his great Trump book, for Medium.

AUGUST

Newsletters:

• On office culling.

• On the 40-year anniversary of being obsessed with sports.

• On rotating restaurants, urban decay and my grandmother.

• On airport jokes, dad and otherwise.

Publications:

• Legal abortion is not a polarizing issue, for Medium.

• The Child Separation Policy was the worst of the Trump atrocities, for Medium.

• The next five Juan Sotos you’ll be sick of talking about, for MLB.com.

• The real home run record is 73, not 62, for New York.

SEPTEMBER

Newsletters:

• On finally getting what you want, and how it really does change everything.

• On Ben Stein.

• On seeing “Barbarian” in a theater with strangers.

• On my kid getting in a skirmish at school.

Publications:

• The NFL is too big to fail, for New York.

• The worst part of getting older is all the dying, for Medium.

• The Dodgers better win it all this year (they didn’t), for MLB.com.

• The Martha’s Vineyard stunt proved the opposite of what Ron DeSantis wanted it to, for Medium.

OCTOBER

Newsletters:

• On hitchhiking.

• On what I’ve learned from one final season coaching Little League Baseball.

• On Bob Mould, and never stopping.

• On the eternal joys of Weird Al.

• On growing a mustache.

Publications:

• I wrote about being at the final Busch Stadium weekend of Pujols/Molina/Wainwright, for MLB.com.

• Screw Brett Favre, for New York.

• The NFL is never going to do anything about concussions, for New York.

• LeBron James got real quiet about politics, all of a sudden, for New York.

NOVEMBER

Newsletters:

• On my every-two-years elections preview post.

• On Julie Powell, and the ineffable nature of Internet fame.

• On tipping.

• On international travel, and the lack thereof.

Publications:

• Why Daniel Snyder will get away with it, for NBC News.

• What fanbase needs a World Series most now? for MLB.com.

• Ron DeSantis shouldn’t run against Trump, for Medium.

DECEMBER

Newsletters:

• On being Dashman.

• On Grant Wahl.

• On the narrative arc of your life.

• On the 10 best movies of 2022.

• On the year-end recap of 2022, the exact newsletter you’re reading right now.

Publications:

• I wrote about the US World Cup road from 1994 to now, for The New York Times.

• America is coming to save the World Cup, for The Washington Post.

• Stop treating Elon Musk like Trump, for Medium.

Whew.

Oh, also: I wrote a freaking book this year.

The Time Has Come is out May 16, 2023. You can pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, your local bookstore, my local bookstore, or wherever books are sold. I think you’re gonna like it. We’ll obviously be talking about this a lot over the next few months.

Oh, and in the interest of full transparency (and efficient scrolling and clicking), here are one man’s Will Leitch Newsletter Rankings For 2022:

1.     Impossible Germany, January 8. (The One About “Impossible Germany” and perfection)

2.     Tonight’s the Day, July 30. (The One About the first day of school.)

3.     Vince Coleman, December 3. (The One About being Dashman.)

4.     Dennis Eckersley, March 5. (The One About Ice-T and Honey Nut Cheerios)

5.     Story to Tell, August 16. (The One About 40 years of watching sports.)

6.     Darryl Kile, March 26. (The One About Taylor Hawkins and dying young)

7.     Sad Kind of Way, October 15. (The One About Bob Mould, and never stopping.)

8.     The Universe, August 23. (The One About the rotating restaurant.)

9.     Many Worlds, June 4. (The One About the Kennedy Space Center.)

10.  Chris Duncan, December 10. (The One About Grant Wahl.)

11.  John Mabry, April 9. (The One About the Daily Illini)

12.  Ken Boyer, May 16. (The One About the first normal “post”-Covid school year.)

13.  Dane Iorg, October 22. (The One About Weird Al.)

14.  Jeff Suppan, November 5. (The One About every-two-years election posts.)

15.  Hints, September 17. (The One About seeing “Barbarian.”)

16.  Ozzie Smith, February 26. (The One About dealing with the horrors of the world.)

17.  Jose Jimenez, January 22. (The One About your first job.)

18.  Country-Song Upside Down, June 11. (The One About summer camp.)

19.  Will Clark, February 5. (The One About Mark Whicker and doing your own thing.)

20.  Falling Apart Right Now, September 10. (The One About Ben Stein.)

21.  All Across the World, September 3. (The One About winning the big one.)

22.  I Am My Mother, October 8. (The One About the final season of coaching Little League baseball.)

23.  Tim McCarver, December 24. (The One About the 10 best movies of 2022.)

24.  Willie McGee, December 17. (The One About the narrative arc of a life.)

25.  A Lifetime to Find, July 16. (The One About being one of THOSE dads.)

26.  Please Be Wrong, June 25. (The One About the limits of protest.)

27.  Glenn Brummer, January 15. (The One About Georgia winning the national championship)

28.  Tony Pena, April 30. (The One About looking outside New York City windows.)

29.  The Plains, July 23. (The One About taking pride in your work.)

30.  Al Hrabosky, April 23. (The One About Gen-X nostalgia.)

31.  Dylan Carlson, February 19. (The One About travel and missing home.)

32.  Tommy Edman, April 16. (The One About turning things in on time.)

33.  Darkness Is Cheap, July 2. (The One About the futility of fighting progress.)

34.  Roger Maris, March 19. (The One About tattoos.)

35.  Cruel Country, May 30. (The One About Ulvalde.)

36.  Hearts Hard to Find, August 27. (The One About telling jokes at airports.)

37.  Michael Wacha, November 19. (The One About tipping.)

38.  Ambulance, June 18. (The One About finally getting Covid.)

39.  Ken Dayley, May 23. (The One About what we’ll remember about the pandemic.)

40.  Tom Pagnozzi, January 29. (The One About working together with a team)

41.  Bruce Sutter, April 2. (The One About the beginning of baseball season)

42.  George Hendrick, October 29. (The One About growing a mustache.)

43.  Tired of Taking It Out on You, September 24. (The One About my kid getting in a skirmish at school.)

44.  Birds Without a Tail/Base of My Skull, July 9. (The One About reasons to stay positive.)

45.  The Empty Condor, October 1. (The One About hitchhiking.)

46.  J.D. Drew, November 12. (The One About Julie Powell.)

47.  So Taguchi, November 26. (The One About never traveling.)

48. Paul Goldschmidt, December 31. (The One About the 2022 newsletters.)

49.  Should’ve Been in Love, January 1. (The One About the 2021 newsletters.)

50.  Rick Ankiel, May 7. (The One About the paperback release of How Lucky.)

51.  Bob Forsch, March 12. (The One About feeling like Internet Andy Rooney.)

52.  Scott Spiezio, February 12. (The One About psilocybin.)

53.  Mystery Blinds, August 6. (The One About culling one’s office.)

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. You get me through every year. Have a wonderful New Years. And Go Dawgs. (And Go Illini.)

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality. (None of these are great this week, it’s the last week before New Years, the brain was mostly shut off.)

1. MLB Greats Who Died in 2022, MLB.com. It’s always an honor to get to write this one.

2. The Ten Biggest Sports Stories of 2022, New York. Our fall ball Little League team earning a tie in its next-to-last game did not make the list, but it should have.

3. Jennifer Lawrence Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. Updated with Causeway.

4. Ten Predictions For 2023, Medium. Guaranteed to be wrong.

5. Well, At Least Tom Brady Had a Bad Year, NBC News. I’m sure just by writing this, I guaranteed that he’ll win the Super Bowl.

6. 2022 Was Better Than 2021, Which Was Better Than 2020, Medium. Hey, we’re on a roll!

7. The Seven Most Important Athletes of 2022, New York. Love year end stuff, love it.

8. The Thirty: One Holiday Wish For Each Franchise, MLB.com. Not above this chestnut either.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, no show until mid-January, but you should listen to Dorkfest again.

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, you still have a short amount of time to hear our preview of the CFP Semifinal against Ohio State.

Seeing Red, no show this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Joe Biden Rolls Into 2024,” Gabriel Debenedetti, New York. Let’s keep it going.

Also, I found this Heather Cox Richardson year-end wrapup downright encouraging.

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!

Also, every single one of you who sent me a holiday card is incredible.

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” The Smashing Pumpkins. This song and (especially) this video are ridiculous, particularly when you realize how Billy Corgan turned out. But this came up on Spotify during a run the other day, and I was a little surprised by how much it rocked? It builds up a ton of momentum and goes crashing through the wall in its second half, in the best way. I think I want to sing it at a ‘90s-themed punk rock karaoke night event that might only exist in my own head.

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

We close with this: Wynn’s new desk (in his new room!) is in fact my first desk, which my parents got me when I was eight years old. Dad refinished and reupholstered the whole thing (and cleaned off some dried 35-year-old boogers).

I used to dream of my first desk being in a museum someday, but I think we can all agree this is a much, much better landing spot.

Be safe out there, everyone. See you next year.

Best,
Will