Volume 5, Issue 63: Two Tonys

"I'll say hello to the guys for you."

My upcoming novel, Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride, will be released on May 20. I believe you will like it. I hope you will pre-order it. Send me your pre-order receipt and I’ll send you a book plate and enter you into a contest to, like, hang out with me. Details here.

Blurb alert! We got a very flattering blurb from Richard Russo, the Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction who wrote Empire Falls and Nobody’s Fool.

Pretty cool! If he likes it, you might too.

While walking around Gainbridge Fieldhouse at a halftime break during the Big Ten Tournament here in Indianapolis, I ran into a man named Jay, and his college-aged son. Jay looked vaguely familiar to me, like I’d known him in some sort of previous life, but I’m also getting older now and honestly a lot of people are starting to look like that.

“Will!” he said, shaking my hand. He was dressed in all orange, just like I was, the Illini game started in 20 minutes, all six Leitch men in attendance were wearing orange, we’re not monsters. “It’s Jay! I haven’t seen you in years!”

My mind scanned through the internal rolodex, Columbo piecing together the clues. Jay … Illini shirt … college-age kid … that voice is familiar … why do I get the sensation, when I hear that voice, like I’ve heard it coming up from behind me? … maybe I sat in front of him on the school bus?

“This guy,” Jay said, nudging his son and pointing his thumb toward me, “this guy was the funniest catcher in the entire baseball league. He’d just make jokes the whole game. Some guys wanted to hit him with their bat, but most of them thought it was hilarious.”

Right! Jay!

The reason Jay’s voiced sounded familiar coming from behind me is because he was the primary umpire of the Mattoon Jaycee Baseball league when I was growing up, basically umpiring most of my games from the ages of 10-14. Jay was only a couple of years older than me, but when you’re 14, “a couple of years” is all the time on the planet; as far as I knew, he was 50. He was an excellent umpire, in that he was generally good at calling balls and strikes, he always kept calm (the most important quality for an umpire to have), and, crucially, he laughed at all my jokes. My strategy as a catcher was basically to talk constantly, and affably, just a chatty fella making conversation; it inevitably distracted the batters, and it tended to give you the benefit of the doubt with the ump on pitches on the outside corner.

And Jay remembered all of it. So, of course, then so did I.

There were so many stories. The time he had to throw so many coaches out of the game that someone’s mom got called out of the stands to be in charge of the dugout. The time a kid got hid in the face with a pitch and bled so much all the white from his uniform was gone. The time that guy’s car window got shattered by a foul ball and he started screaming about it, like it was the hitter’s fault. The time it randomly started snowing and we went ahead and played through, hey, he was the umpire, if he wasn’t going to stop us, no one was.. We shared all these old stories, as his son patiently nodded along and Big Ten fans from all across the greater Midwest navigated around the two misty-eyed Mattoonians standing in the middle of the passageway. We could have stayed there all day.

At one point, Jay looked behind me for a second. “Wait … is your dad here?” I told him he was back at the seats, with his three younger brothers and my son, five Leitch boys in orange. “Oh, man,” he said, “I’m gonna hear that guy’s voice in my head the rest of my life.”

During my baseball games, my father’s standard position was to stand behind home plate, hands on the fence, providing his own running commentary in his signature booming voice. Dad was never rude, or insulting, or even openly confrontational. He was much more subtle than that: He had mastered the art of umpire passive-aggressiveness. My Dad would not tell the umpire he made a bad call, or boo, or hiss. On close pitches, he would say things like, “Ooooh! Great pitch! Just missed!” or “Give ‘em a big target, Will!” This would go on constantly, all game, every game, to the point that it felt like Jay was making strike and ball calls specifically for my father. Dad never yelled. He was never mean. He just went on and on and on, all game. “Ooooh, that’s a tough pitch to lay off of! Great eye I guess!”

Jay smiled. “I must have heard that a million times,” he said. “Ooooh … just missed, big target!”

I smiled back. Jay grinned. “Big target,” he repeated. “It is crazy the things you remember.”

Jay just happened to run into me on a Thursday night at a basketball tournament in Indianapolis, each of us 35 years removed from those summer nights in Central Illinois, under flickering lights, mosquitos biting, playing in the dirt. He has gotten married, built a career, raised children, sent them to college. He is an entirely different human being—who has lived a life that would have seemed unfathomable to the teenager calling balls and strikes all those nights—in every possible way. There was no reason to hold on to those memories of my father behind home plate. He surely hadn’t thought about any of it in decades. And seeing me made it all come rushing back to him. In an instant.

I shook his hand. “I’ll tell him you said hi,” he said. “I’m sure he remembers you.”

Jay laughed. “I’m sure he does too.”

*********************

My dad’s three brothers are all together with him, and us, on this trip. My father moved to Georgia, away from Mattoon and his three brothers, right before Covid hit, and every Friday during lockdown, they’d get on a Zoom I set up for them and just spend hours talking, or even not talking—one time I checked in on their Zoom and they were all just sitting there silent, but still together, for a good five minutes. Their first road trip after all getting their vaccines was to go to this Big Ten Tournament, in March 2021, when you still had to have rows of empty seats between you and other fans, when they played in a football stadium but only let about 8,000 people in. The four brothers, men who had been without their father for 30 years, men who had grown up together but had just spent the most amount of time away from each other as they ever had, men who might not talk about their feelings much but are deeply comfortable just sitting together in silence, gathered to watch an outstanding Illini team, led by All-Americans Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn, playing in front of actual human beings for the first time all season, win the Big Ten Tournament. It was a joyous moment after a terrifying, isolating, world-changing few months, a sign, however brief, that everyone’s lives might be getting back to normal—that there might be a path forward.

The tournament was back in Indianapolis this year, and the brothers decided to get together again. Raised in a home with eight children by a father with health issues and a mother did all the heavy lifting and lived until the age of 93, strong and fierce as a bear to the end, they are now older men, all retired, sitting around their kitchens, drinking coffee, fretting about their 401(k)s, hanging out with the dog. Their lives have been well-lived, and, in a gift they always assumed they would not be getting from their ailing father, have been lived long. They lost the first of the eight siblings late last year, my aunt Becky, just before Christmas, at the age of 82. It snapped everybody to attention. You make the effort to see everybody when you can.

We are all staying in an Airbnb together, in a fashionable area of Indianapolis, with independent bookstores, fancy coffee shops and wide bike lanes, an area that nevertheless feels a little uncomfortable and alien to these rural Illinois men used to open spaces and quiet. They wake up in the morning, come downstairs, grunt “mornin’” at each other and drink their coffee in silence.

And then, as my son and I sit in the next room filling out brackets, we hear the memories return. That one teacher from high school. That guy who used to work at Young’s. That friend who had the kid, what was that kid’s name, good kid, that kid. What kind of truck did you have back then? That was a good truck.

They sit together, sharing stories of lives lived together, and separately. It comes back to them when they least suspect it. They can’t believe all the things they remember. It’s almost like none of it ever went away in the first place.

We are developing more of these memories on this trip. The Leitch gentlemen are proud to have gotten young William kicked out of his first bar. (We tried to sneak the 13-year-old to a booth with us and got busted; the above photo was taken as the bouncer scowled at us. We later apologized!) We argued about what is happening in the world right now, but only up to a point, before it went too far and ruined this time together the way it has ruined so much else. We watched the Illini get absolutely smoked by Maryland last night. We talked. We also sat silently, comfortably.

I do not know when these memories will return when this trip is over, when they will be instantly conjured, out of nowhere, by a chance meeting here, an unexpected encounter there, an old photo, an old sweatshirt, a random flicker of a random thought. But they will return, in my mind, in theirs, in my son’s, decades from now, long after many of us are gone. I used to think this was all just nostalgia, all remember when, all luxuriation in the past so that you can escape the present. But I’m not sure I feel that way anymore. These memories are not holding onto the past. They are assurances that that past still has a place in our future. After all, someday, the moments we have now will be the ones that return to us. It will keep them alive. It will remind us that the present is someday the past … and worth holding on to. It is, after all, crazy the things you remember. Big target. Big target.

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

1. MLB Division Preview: Final Predictions, MLB.com. Here are my picks for every playoff team this year.

2. The Yankees Are Toast, New York. They … might finish last this year?

3. Steven Soderbergh Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Updated with Black Bag.

4. MLB Power Rankings, MLB.com. They start weekly at the end of the month.

Also, I have a very fun piece about college basketball in The Washington Post that’s going up first thing tomorrow morning that I think people will like.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “Mickey 17,” “Chaos: The Manson Murders” and “Eephus.”

Morning Lineup, I did Monday’s show.

Seeing Red, Bernie Miklasz and I previewed the Cardinals pitchers.

HOW CAN I HELP?

As established, we’re compiling the stories of individual people who are trying to find ways to make the world a little bit better in whatever fashion they can, no matter how small. Send yours to howcanonepersonhelp@gmail.com. Today’s entry comes from Mike Rengel in St. Louis, Missouri, who tells of us work with the International Institute of St. Louis.

My city, St. Louis, is home to an amazing organization and institution, the International Institute of St. Louis. Formed in 1923, the IISTL has been helping immigrants and refugees find their feet in a new and often baffling land. They assist with assimilation, learning the nuts and bolts of their new home, learning English, finding housing, and finding jobs.

The IISTL has helped resettle numerous waves of refugees, all of whom have made St. Louis stronger, and in many cases, helped stem the hollowing out of the urban core after white flight to the suburbs. Vietnamese in the 1980s, Bosnians in the 1990s, and currently, Afghans, Haitians, Somalis, and more. They’re just as important to the story of St. Louis as the Germans who helped fuel the city’s rise in the mid to late 19th century, the Italians in the 1890s, and the Poles who settled in north city who I am descended from.

I have been giving the IISTL my money for years, their mission is close to my heart - my great grandparents were immigrants from Poland - but after the 2024 election, I decided it was time to give them my time as well.

I have been taking part in regular job interview practice sessions for recently arrived refugees who are trying to find a job to support them and their families. So far I have worked with folks from Afghanistan and Eritrea. My task, along with other volunteers, is to help these job seekers, many of whom have limited or still-developing English skills, internalize the dos and don’ts of American culture as it relates to job interviews. We also practice mock interviews, asking the job seekers about their experience in their home countries, and what they want to do in America. The mix of overwhelm mixed with relief and raw determination is evident in all of their eyes and voices. In some cases, the job seekers were professionals in their home countries; in America, they often have to settle for something far more basic, at least as a first step. That humility is something often not seen in my fellow Americans these days.

Working with these refugees, these soon-to-become new Americans, connects me to a segment of the American experiment I deeply value and appreciate. America is a messy, often contradictory place, even as it pertains to immigration itself. But to help new arrivals to the USA get on their feet, and to understand that we are not all our country’s worst traits, has to be worth something. I hope that these 3 hours every so many weeks make the world a better place, even a tiny bit. That’s my goal, anyway.

I was particularly moved by this one. The IISTL is a fantastic organization that is extremely worthy of your support; if you want to donate, here’s the link.

We have gotten so many of these already. Please send me yours.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“America Is Under Siege by a Surprising Force: Losers,” Luke Winkie, Slate. A very fun, very true piece that nails something I’ve been thinking a lot about: These people are lame. A fun selection:

Allow me to go on, because I think we’ve been trying to analyze the sensation we’re all feeling with language that intellectualizes the symptoms and misses the forest for the trees. Like, for instance, this “Gulf of America” situation. Is it emblematic of a clammy nativism at the heart of the Trump brand? I mean, sure, but it’s also extremely uncool. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico is an uncool idea, cheered on by uncool people, who have bad taste. The Department of Government Efficiency is a program that has apparently been given limitless authority to hamstring the federal government’s ability to accomplish basic tasks; it also takes its DOGE nickname from a 12-year-old meme for normies. That is uncool. Selling $5 million “gold cards” for expedited immigration is uniquely emblematic of the transactional huckster-state we have become, but don’t let that belie the more visceral nature of our revulsion. It’s uncool! It’s embarrassing! It is hard to watch, for reasons that go far beyond cruelty and these people’s disregard for the future!

The pervasive uncoolness is not limited to political actors. Uncoolness has spread like a disease through the nation. Nobody has been spared. Post Malone’s country music pivot, or Theo Von’s sudden interest in foreign affairs, or the Christian nationalist version Russell Brand, or Mark Zuckerberg cosplaying as Benson Boone are not indicators of a healthy society. It has never been easier for someone to be radicalized into the worst version of themself, and if there is anything I’ve learned from 2025, it’s that the forces of evil turn out to also be unbearably cringeworthy. Kanye West, a man who was once cool, asserted his pivot to Nazism on X last month by adopting a tedious 4Chan affectation. It culminated in a moment where he was selling swastika-stamped T-shirts for $20 while posting his favorite pornography. There was no ingenuity, no nuance to the shock value, just the same flavorless right-wing trolling tactics that bloomed into dangerous vibrancy back in 2016, but have since grown moldy and soft to the touch as they’ve rotted in the crucible of mainstream attention. This is the dominant culture now, and it sucks.

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

“Fire Woman,” The Cult. If you watched last week’s (kinda middling, I have to say; there’s just two episodes left, let’s get on with it guys) episode of Severance, you might have noticed that it ended with The Cult’s “Fire Woman.” It was a quixotic choice, to say the least, from director Ben Stiller—who also gave a cameo to writer (on Substack!) Jerry Stahl in the episode; Stiller played Stahl in his movie version of Stahl’s heroin memoir Permanent Midnight—but I was delighted: I have always had an irrational love of this song and actively cheered that Stiller remembered it enough to end his episode with it. “Smoke, she is a rising!”

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.

Also, currently working on a Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride Playlist.

Seriously, though: That Illini game was awful.

A reminder: Tomorrow night, after the NCAA Selection Shows, I will send out the Eighth Annual The Will Leitch Newsletter NCAA Pool. The winners of both the men’s and women’s pool will win a signed copy of the new book as well as the right to assign me any newsletter topic of their choosing. (Here’s how last year’s turned out.) I can’t believe I’ve now been doing this for eight years.

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will