Volume 5, Issue 52: Pie-O-My

"Can't I just be sad about a horse?'

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2024 is going to be a year we’ll all going to remember for a long time, what sure seems like a pivot year, when the pendulum swung one way rather than the other, changing the lives of everyone on the planet for the rest of their lives. I certainly know that I will never forget it.

But what I remember, and what my children will remember, will be very different. I was 10 years old in 1986, a year when some truly horrible things happened. The Challenger exploded. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant melted down. But I was 10. I only barely remember those things. What I remember is the Super Bowl Shuffle. What I remember is a Jaycee League baseball game when I got the walkoff single, a game that was coached by my mom because my father got called out to work an hour before the game and she was the only one who knew everyone on the team to put a lineup together. It was an outside pitch, and I poked it down the first base line, and John Hawkins scored and everybody dogpiled at home plate. I ripped the left knee of my baseball pants when Shaun Hendricks jumped on top of me, and we hugged and screamed. I can recall every detail of every second. I don’t know if I heard about Chernobyl until years later. I certainly don’t know where I was when it happened.

When I look back at 2024, I’ll remember what happened in November, and not just that—also the madness of all that led up to it, including those few months when I felt legitimately inspired, like we might find a way out of this, like someone whom I truly believed in, for the first time in a long time, could maybe pull this off—and how much it hurt when she didn’t. But that’s not what my kids—and, I suspect, most kids, the people who, after all, are going to have to fix all this mess that we have made—are going to remember. They’re just going to remember being kids. My son Wynn is going to remember the time he got to fly a plane, or getting to see Messi play, or receiving a message from his favorite storm chaser. And William—and hopefully, me—will most remember his team Rook & Pawn winning the Athens Little League championship, a wild comeback that he led by throwing a shutout in the semifinals. He won’t remember electoral vote totals, or a pivot toward chaos. He’ll remember this:

In 30 years, it won’t matter what I think about anything, what 2024 meant to me personally: I’ll be an old man, ranting about how things used to be. But my sons will have moments from this year that will have helped make them who they are, moments that they’ll pass along to the people in their own lives, people we don’t yet even know. And these people are the ones that matter—not me. 2024 was a rough year. It can really bring you down. But the story of 2024 isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

And 2025 will bring its own stories. Heck, I’m even giving you a new one myself.

Lots more to come on that one, obviously. (Though you can always preorder if you’re feeling frisky.)

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 2024. 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 being worse than my son at video games.

• On my mom, and all the turns that a life can take.

• On pain, sickness and suffering being the exception, rather than the rule.

• On Jeff Pearlman, and The Olds always thinking they know best.

Publications:

• The end of college football as we know it, for CNN.

• The Michigan Football Dream Year, for New York.

• The NFL Season of Swift, for New York.

FEBRUARY

Newsletters:

• On Las Vegas, old bosses and Hunter S. Thompson.

• On seeing U2 at The Sphere.

• On people who park on the street and block traffic.

• On enshittification, specifically of the Internet.

Publications:

• Being there, in person, for the first Las Vegas Super Bowl, for New York.

• Women’s sports are about to explode, for New York.

MARCH

Newsletters:

• On how to respond when people are mad at you online.

• On being an umpire.

• On Minneapolis, making memories, and sushi trains.

• On Illini basketball, and family.

• On Steve Martin, and how to guide a career.

Publications:

• The Murder On My Running Trail, on the horrific death of Laken Riley, for New York.

• Every Best Picture Winner Ranked, for Vulture.

• My Annual World Series Winner Draft With Mike Petriello, for MLB.com. (I finally won this year.)

• I reviewed Charlie Hustle, the great Pete Rose biography, for The Wall Street Journal.

• Steve Martin Movies, Ranked and Updated, for Vulture.

APRIL

Newsletters:

• On a quietly evil thing Donald Trump did that everyone’s already forgotten about.

• On feeling nostalgic for O.J. Simpson.

• On children getting in trouble at school.

• On the emotional purity of watching sports.

Publications:

• My O.J. Simpson Obit, for New York.

• An early sense that sports was going to stay out of politics this year, for New York.

MAY

Newsletters:

• On traveling, and getting out of your comfort zone.

• On the paperback release of The Time Has Come.

• On your children slowly, but undeniably, moving away from you.

• On actually ranking my favorite baseball teams, in order. Bias check!

Publications:

• An ode to Tom Thibodeau, for New York.

• Another damn Mike Trout injury, for MLB.com.

JUNE

Newsletters:

• On whether we are living in particularly unsettled times.

• On the Rook & Pawn championship.

• On R.E.M.

• On how it’s getting harder to work all the time as one gets older.

• On standing for the national anthem.

Publications:

• The reinvention of Kyrie Irving, for New York.

• Caitlin Clark getting pushed around is good, actually, for New York.

• In praise of Joey Chestnut, for The Washington Post.

• My now-ominous interview with the author of Apprentice in Wonderland, for New York.

• How the USMNT Lost Its Juice, for New York.

• I wrote about fellow Mattoonian Hayden Birdsong, for MLB.com.

JULY

Newsletters:

• On another insane week in America.

• On worrying one’s side is going to lose.

• On how professional wrestling is bad for the world.

• On feeling optimism again (temporarily).

Publications:

• The Copa America fiasco, for New York.

• The first hopeful Olympics in memory, for New York.

AUGUST

Newsletters:

• On writing about your kids.

• On my father turning 75.

• On giving a commencement speech.

• On Obama.

• On going back to my hometown of Mattoon.

Publications:

• An ode to history’s noble losers, for The Washington Post.

• Simone Biles rules, for NBC News.

• The ugly strategy behind gambling apps, for Fast Company.

• The best player at every age, for MLB.com.

SEPTEMBER

Newsletters:

• On school shootings.

• On political lawn signs, and living together.

• On a funeral.

• On extreme weather patterns.

Publications:

• Mets fans having their moment, for New York.

• “Matlock,” Generation-X Icon, for The Washington Post.

• My Review of “No Friday Night Lights,” for The Los Angeles Review of Books.

OCTOBER

Newsletters:

• On the death of Pete Rose, and how being a jerk sometimes really does get you punished.

• On training for a marathon.

• On why people should not vote for Donald Trump.

• On why people should vote for Kamala Harris.

Publications:

• My (sadly negative) review of Joe Posnanski’s “Why We Love Football,” for The Wall Street Journal.

• On athletes sitting this election out, for New York.

• The impossibility of dramatizing Trump, for The Washington Post.

NOVEMBER

Newsletters:

• On pivot moments in history.

• On trying to come to terms with it.

• On Gen-X becoming the bad guys.

• On “woke.”

• On self-driving cars, and the stupidity and laziness of AI.

Publications:

• We don’t care about concussions anymore, for NBC News.

• Who needs a World Series most in 2025, for MLB.com.

• My very long piece about running the New York City Marathon, for New York.

• I started writing Illinois men’s basketball power rankings, for Illini Board.

• Aaron Rodgers sucks, part 50, for New York.

• The Tyson-Paul Fight Was What We Deserve, for The New York Times.

DECEMBER

Newsletters:

• On escaping into sports.

• On what to tell young media students.

• On the top 10 movies of 2024.

• On the end of the year, the newsletter you’re reading right now.

Publications:

• I was back in the Reasons to Love NYC issue this year, for New York.

• It’s OK for Dylan fans to like the new biopic, for The Washington Post.

Ordinarily, I rank every newsletter at the end of the year, but I don’t know if I have the stomach for it this time. I will say that my favorite one was probably “The Weight,” one that ended up becoming one of the major themes of the new book. (The Michael Gerson quote from that newsletter ended up becoming the novel’s epigraph.) But I also do not always know if I’m the best judge of such matters.

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 Illini. We’re gonna make it.

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

1. James Mangold Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Tied to A Complete Unknown.

2. The Ten Biggest Sports Stories of the Year, New York. End of the year stuff.

3. The Top Seven Athletes of the Year, New York. More end of the year stuff.

4. The Signature Players of the 2024 Season, MLB.com. Yet more end of the year stuff.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, Dorkfest was our last show of the year, so you should listen to that again.

Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, we previewed the Georgia-Notre Dame game.

Morning Lineup, No show this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Inside Sesame Street As It Fights To Survive,” Laura Meckler, The Washington Post. It is no exaggeration to say that I learned to read, think and dream from “Sesame Street.” In its 55th season, it has never been more in peril.

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! (Got some more of these out this week, stand by.)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“The Underdog,” Spoon. This song always picks me up. I needed that in 2024. Also, Pete Buttigieg can play this song on the piano.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section. Let this drive your listening, not the algorithm!

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

Happy New Year, everyone. Thank you for reading and going on this journey with me every week. See you in 2025.

Best,
Will