Volume 4, Issue 51: Mark Rzepczynski

"They call him Scrabble, because ... well, that name."

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.

One of the best things about writing is that you rarely see my biggest mistakes. Sure, a spelling error will slip through every once in a while, and, because I’ve yet to hire a fact checker for this free weekly newsletter, there surely are some groaners that have slipped past the goalie from time to time. But on the whole: By the time you read this, or really anything I write, the big problems have been mostly fixed. I’m doing final proof edits on The Time Has Come this week, and even though that thing has gone through multiple edits, an extensive copy edit and an endless number of laps around my own brain, yesterday I caught a massive, egregious error that, had it made it through to the final version, would have caused me considerable embarrassment and, if I’m being honest, would have had me bashing my head against the wall every time I so much as thought about the book. It was an all-timer of a groaner. But you’ll never know. Because I caught it. To you, it’s like it never happened at all.

I’ve done plenty of television in my life, and I’ve gotten better at it, but I still can never get past the fundamental fact of the medium: You have to get it right the first time. If you stumble, or you remember something incorrectly, or you just think of the perfect joke about five seconds late, that’s it: Everybody sees it, everybody knows you screwed up, you’ve already lost. That cable newscasters, or sports broadcasters, are not constantly humiliating themselves is miraculous to me. To say the exact right thing, every single time, the first time, with the entire world out there watching, staring at you, waiting for you to screw up … it’s a truly incredible skill. And in many ways, it’s the opposite of how I interact with the world, or how I approach the world. I’ve told this story before, but an old friend once observed that listening to me talk is like watching a man in a room with a bunch of locked doors. He goes down one path, and that door's locked, that's OK, he backs up, tries another door, nope, that one's locked too. You have to wait for him to find the correct door, so he can, at last, walk through it. That can be exhausting to have to wait as I navigate this entire circuitous path. But when I write, you never see any of that process. You just see me walk through the correct door.

That’s one of the main reasons I got into this in the first place: It gave me a clear route to try to say exactly what I wanted to say. I found that hard in the real world, which moves too fast, which has all this exterior stress on you, which can all fall apart if you say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Writing was a way to get the world to slow down, to take a step back, to try to find some form in the chaos. The world didn’t make sense. But writing allowed me to attempt to wrangle it into some coherent narrative—to try to find a beginning, a middle and end … to try to tell a story. To make it make sense.

But you can’t make anything make sense in real time. Which is why it’s so amazing to me that the best broadcasters can cast the grand illusion that you can. A few years back, I used to do live baseball broadcasts on the now-defunct MLB Plus with Daron Sutton and Mike Petriello, among others, and we had to sit there and describe and analyze every second of a four-hour baseball game while it happened. (We didn’t even get to go to the bathroom!) That I still have a career at all after doing that for a month is a miracle. After you’ve done that a few times, you’ll never mock an announcer for a verbal slip ever again. During the Peach Bowl on New Years Eve this year, ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit at one point accidentally called Georgia coach Kirby Smart “Kirby Smith.” He was widely mocked for this, but if any of us had been calling the game, he would have alternately been referred to as “Kirby Puckett,” “Kris Kringle” and “Krusty Krab” several times by halftime. Saying the exact correct thing the first time, and then every time, is very, very hard. I have utmost respect for the people who can do it as a second nature.

Which brings me to … spelling bees. My son William had a spelling bee this week. He is a smart child, and he was very excited for the Bee this year: He’d gotten knocked out early last year, he’d been studying like crazy and, because he’s in fifth grade and will (gasp) be in middle school next year, this was his last chance. He was ready.

There is a wonderful, harrowing (and Oscar-nominated) 2002 movie called Spellbound, which is built around an ingenious idea: Let’s meet 10 top child contestants at the National Spelling Bee, follow them around their daily lives, get the audience to care about them and cheer for them, and then, for the last half hour of the movie, let’s watch them all mow each other down. It is downright agonizing to watch children, children we’ve grown to deeply sympathize with, all fail, one by one, with the whole world watching. The movie is light and funny and smart and also absolutely heartbreaking: It’s unquestionably the most gruesome G-rated movie ever made.

(Spellbound was one of the quiet inspirations, by the way, along with Short Cuts and Dog Day Afternoon, for The Time Has Come. But we’ll get into that in a couple of weeks.)

It is so hard to watch these kids lose, particularly when you understand just how much stress they are under. Because the thing about spelling bees is that they have no perspective, no taking-a-step-back-and-reflecting, whatsoever. One mistake, and you are out. When you are spelling a word, you cannot accidentally say the wrong letter, stop yourself, say “sorry, that’s not right, let me do that again,” and then spell the word correctly. There is no form to be made from the chaos. You get one shot. Say the wrong letter, once, just one little time, and you’re gone. You’re out. It’s over.

It is one thing to watch children in a movie go through this. It is quite another to watch your own child go through it.

I know that the Spelling Bee is a key test for any child, a way to see how they handle pressure, how they respond to not just competition but sustained public attention. I know it is good for them. But just because your child is in a cauldron that will provide them some long-term benefit does not mean it is not insanely stressful and terrifying for a parent to watch them in there. Everybody watching, everybody staring, all of them waiting to see if you make one … small … mistake. If you do—you’re gone. I’ve never wanted to hug my son more.

It does not matter whether or not he won. What matters is that he went up there, and he faced it, and he did his best. I was proud of him for that. Life is not made of moments where everyone is hanging on every word, or every letter, that you say to see if you mess up. But it can feel that way sometimes. It’s why I’m grateful to get to stumble around the world, tripping over furniture, walking into walls, doing my best but still saying the wrong thing the first time, and maybe even the second time, and still be able to come back at the end of the day, take a deep breath, and try to write my way through it. We all make mistakes. The gift is having the opportunity to fix them. The gift is being able to try to make it right.

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 Week We Pretended We Were Stricken By Football, New York. Damar Hamlin appears to be recovering, so, hey, full speed ahead!

2. Your Next Ten World Series Winners, MLB.com. I can see the future.

3. Immediate Reactions to the Twins-Correa Deal, MLB.com. Wrote this on a plane in, like, 30 minutes, and it turned out well!

4. Christian Bale Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. Updated with The Pale Blue Eye.

5. The January 6 Committee’s Book Is a Lot Worse than the 9/11 Commission’s One, Medium. The 9/11 Commission Report remains a riveting read. Not so much with this new one.

6. There’s Fist Fighting in Congress Now, Medium. So that’s great.

7. Which Division Champ Is Most Likely to Repeat Next Year? MLB.com. Here’s hoping for the same six.

8. The Thirty: Ever Team’s Most Intriguing Offseason Acquisition, MLB.com. Carlos Correa made me rewrite this, like, three times.

9. The Thirty: One Extension Candidate for Every Team, MLB.com. I was on MLB Network talking about this piece this week. I had to do it in the morning, and my hair was a little messed up.

   MLB Network @MLBNetwork

   Which players are candidates to receive a contract extension? 📝 @williamfleitch makes his case for why Harrison Bader, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Vlad Guerrero Jr. could all be due for an extension. #MLBNHotStove

PODCASTS

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, Georgia won the national championship, we talked about it afterwards, kinda, we were pretty excited.

Grierson & Leitch, no show until next week, but you should listen to Dorkfest again.

Seeing Red, no show this week, taping on Monday.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“The Eyes of a Killer,” Howard Blum, AirMail. Was looking for the True Crime tick-tock about the Idaho murders, and this is an excellent start. This Slate piece also points out the weird opt-in DNA genealogy trick they used to find him. Careful with those Family Tree apps you use, they just might get your second cousin tossed in jail.

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

“One Big Holiday,” My Morning Jacket. Every once in a while, I’ll go through a week or so where I listen almost exclusively to mid-aughts My Morning Jacket. This is one of those weeks. I really do believe their live album “Okonokos” is the perfect way to be introduced to them.

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

I am off this morning to yet another national championship parade. Ugh, didn’t we just have one of these?

Also, awesome Illini win last night.

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will