Volume 4, Issue 72: Yadier Molina

"He's still the same guy he was 20 years ago. Except maybe better."

Hey, the book’s out. If you haven’t bought it yet, you should. If you have, you should write a (hopefully positive!) review of it on Goodreads or Amazon or both. I hope those of you who have a copy are enjoying it.

Also, if you happen to be in or near Missoula, Montana—and why wouldn’t you be?—you should come out and see me THIS WEDNESDAY AT 7 PM MT at Shakespeare & Co. downtown. I’ve never been to Montana! I’m kind of excited to go to Montana! This is the last stop of the The Time Has Come book tour until stops this fall in Lincoln, Nebraska, and St. Simons Island, Georgia. So if you want to be a part of it … get thee to Montana!

My 30th high school reunion is this weekend. I am not going to be able to make it. I’m driving my son William to Chattanooga for summer camp on Sunday, and then I’m flying to Montana on Monday, and there just wasn’t a way to make it work. There are people in the world whose stomach turns upon even thinking about attending a high school reunion; perhaps you are one of these people. But I am sad to miss it. It’s important, I think, to remember where you were, to take stock of where you’ve been, to see those who have been on the same journey you’ve been on, to gather some sense of where you might be going next. On one night in a hot high school basketball gym in May 1993, we were all together, in the same room, ending something and starting something else, all in the same spot. Where we have all gone since then is a reflection of our world, and of ourselves. A reunion is exactly the sort of opportunity it’s worth taking: A time for pausing, and considering.

Thirty years, it must be said, is a very long time.

I made it back for my 25th reunion five years ago, and you should know: I had a terrific time. My hometown of Mattoon, Illinois, is a small town, and one that can be difficult to leave, if one even wants to. The majority of the people at my reunion were still in town, and I found myself—as someone who loves my hometown, particularly as it has fallen on harder times over the last several decades, like so many rural small towns across America—grateful for them, the ones who have stayed, who have attempted to keep the town a place for their children to thrive the way it was for them. It’s a hard job: To walk through downtown Mattoon is to see a once-thriving town center decimated and abandoned. There are some signs still up for businesses that closed decades ago, and the last time I was there, the only place still open past 8 p.m. was an unstaffed dark room with no windows that featured three online gaming machines and two creaking metal barstools. But this is still my town, still a place with people I love, still an essential part of who I am. It is a place I find myself, still, missing constantly, the place that, to this day, is the place I feel most comfortable—the one place I can look up at the clear sky and, if just for a second, finally catch my breath a little. It is a place I will always feel a little guilty for leaving. It is a place that will always be my home.

To see these people, to be back in my town, for the 25th reunion was surprisingly restorative. I saw my old baseball teammates as well as my old scholastic bowl ones. I heard stories about myself, and my friends, that I hadn’t remembered. I learned that two of my classmates, in 2018, were already grandparents, which blew my mind. More than anything else, I talked with people who, in their own way, will know me in a way no one who ever met me after them ever will. They knew me at my most unformed, guileless, confused—at my most open, really. And I knew them the same way. Thirty years is a lifetime ago. But it’s the same. It’s really the same.

We now have our own Facebook group, the class of 1993, as of course we would have to. The last few weeks it has existed mostly to promote this weekend’s event, but that’s not what it usually is. It usually exists for obituaries. Those have accelerated over the last few years. A few—several, way too many—died of Covid. Just last week, we lost one of our classmates to kidney disease. Sometimes the cause is mysterious, or something the family has decided to keep private, but there are forever fewer of us every year. Before the 25th reunion, the only reunion I’d ever attended was the 10th, when was probably too soon; I wasn’t much more formed at that one than I’d been when I graduated. At that one, we paused before starting the event to observe a moment of silence for two classmates who had died over the last 10 years, a shocking tragedy none of us could wrap our minds around. Twenty years later, we could not take moments of silence like that. Too many are gone. It is not so shocking. By the next one, in 2028, there will be more people, surely people who will be there this weekend, who will have left us. You lose a few more every year. This is how it works. Eventually, we will no longer lament the ones who are gone entirely and simply celebrate those few of us that are left.

I remember, from that 10th anniversary, there still being some hurt feelings from some of the attendees (and particularly from those who refused to come at all), the old factions and lingering teenage insecurities leading to all those bad, awkward sensations returning, oh look there’s all the popular kids at their own separate table again. But I didn’t see that nearly as much at the 25th reunion, and I bet it’ll be gone entirely over the next decade. We’ve all gone through so much since 1993, so much we never could have seen coming, such pain, such joy, such upheaval, such chaos, such fear, such delight, such despair, such hope. There’s so little, as you get older, that you have to hold onto, so little that’s just yours, so little that cares to remind you of who you once were, of how you got to where you are—of what the bend of your life looks like, when you can get a few steps back from it. Those people from high school may have little connection to your life today. But they’re still inextricable from who you are, and who you always be. There were times I might have lamented that. Now I find myself so lucky to have it. To have people who, in their own way, can truly see me—where I was, where I’ve been, what I’ve done. And I can see them the same way.

At my event for The Time Has Come in Downers Grove, Illinois (a Chicago suburb) this last week, an old high school classmate named Andrew showed up. Andrew had been on the scholastic bowl team with me, part of our extended friend group; I remember most having some fierce, but friendly, political debates with him around the 1992 election, an election neither one of us was old enough to vote in. He wasn’t able to take part in our graduation and had left school to finish his studies at home suddenly, so it had been longer that I’d seen him than anyone else in my class. I had still tried to keep in touch. I knew he’d gone through some personal difficulties in the last 15 years or so. I worried about him, but, you know, I have my own life, and my own people, to worry about. When I thought about him, I thought of him fondly. I hoped he was OK.

And when he showed up Tuesday, looking very different but also exactly the same, I nearly leapt out of my chair to embrace him.

That’s what a reunion is about, not just a class reunion, but any opportunity to see someone who was once a part of your life but has now moved on, just like you have. They are a part of you, and you are a part of them. This is what getting older is, finding these people, losing these people, rediscovering these people, being just happy that they’re still there and so are you. Life is so busy, and so exhausting, and so hard, that it can feel hard just to keep your head above water, to try to see what’s right in front of your face. But the people in your past are not just history, a reason to tell old stories. They are who we are today, and will be tomorrow. After all, there’s someone out there you haven’t seen in decades who would be delighted to hear from you today. And thus there’s someone you see now, who maybe you don’t appreciate, who you take for granted, or who maybe you don’t think about much at all, that you’ll be delighted to hear from 30 years from now.

But you don’t have to wait 30 years. You can see them right now. Because they won’t be around forever. And neither will you.

I am very sorry to miss my classmates of Mattoon High School Class of 1993 this weekend. I would love to see them, and I will be thinking about them. If I am lucky, I will see them in five years. But they’re with me every day regardless, and will be forever, just like I’ll be with them. We carry them all around with us. And we always will. Be safe out there, fellow Green Wave. Our journeys are only getting started.

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

1. There Are More Gambling Scandals Coming, New York. Never letting this go, sorry.

2. The PGA Tour Never Had Any Scruples, New York. We knew this, right?

3. The Toughest Calls on the All-Star Ballot, MLB.com. I spend way too much time on my All-Star ballot, every year.

4. Stephen King Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. Updated with The Boogeyman.

5. The Thirty: Your Best All-Star Vote For Every Team, MLB.com. Sorry, I had to pick a Cardinal, even if I didn’t want to.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we did an in-person show, discussing “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the great “Past Lives” and “Lynch/Oz.”

Seeing Red, Bernie and I have had just about enough.

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, Scott, Tony and I did a summer check in.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“The Binge Purge,” Josef Adalian and Lane Brown, Vulture. Being in Los Angeles over the weekend gave me a better understanding of just how dark the situation is with the entertainment industry right now. This gets at it well.

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

“Great Expectations,” Jurassic 5. All the talk about “positive rap” last week got me back on the great, and forever underappreciated, Jurassic 5.

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

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

While I have you, here’s a fun new venture with stuff you will like if you are into pretty tabletop things. It is my understanding that many people are.

And thanks to all who came out to Downers Grove last week. We went to the great Orange and Brew Bottle Shop and Tap Room afterwards and told all sort of Illini stories. Look at all these beautiful people.

Last stop, Montana on Wednesday. I get to meet more people, I cannot wait.

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will