Volume 6, Issue 24: Blonde on Blonde

"Time will tell just who has fell, and who's been left behind."

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Also, I got so many incredible submissions for The 50 States Project I introduced last week. I will be writing the Illinois version next week to provide a template, and then I’ll start getting back to you all about your potential contributions. You’re the best: Keep ‘em coming.

I stopped coaching Little League Baseball a few years ago, once it became clear that the desire that the other coaches had to win their individual games very much surpassed mine. I remember talking to the mother of one of our players, her kid was a nine-year-old freckled kid named Hudson, they’re all named Hudson down here, and she thanked me for being encouraging of her son. “He likes playing for you more than he liked playing for his dad,” he said. “His dad is much more competitive than you are.” I found myself wanting to tell her, actually, I’m quite competitive, just in real life, not, you know, when it’s nine-year-olds playing baseball, but I didn’t, probably because our winless record surely made the point enough on its own.

Since leaving coaching, I still go to all my son’s games, and I’m generally the guy operating the scoreboard behind home plate. It’s a lovely view, though I do try to hide when my son is on the mound in case my pacing makes him nervous.

I love going to the games, but they have a tendency, as the season goes along, to get a little incessant: If you are not careful, you will spend your entire spring eating concession stand hot dogs rather than sitting around the dinner table. This is particularly true as the school year ends and your kids have important tests to take first thing in the morning, tests that are difficult for them to concentrate on when they’re out at the ballpark until 10:30 at night. On Monday night, my son had one of those patented Little League games that—because of defensive lapses, erratic relief pitching and mound visits that, from my experience, don’t amount to much more than “please please please throw strikes my children are starving”—lasted deep into the evening and moved so slowly that, as I once put it, I began to wonder if maybe time was working differently at the park, like we were in outer space, like there were time dilations, like it was Interstellar, like one minute of baseball time was like a year on the rest of earth.

This is what the third baseman looked like by the time the game ended. (This is a great joke if you have seen Interstellar recently.)

I was worried about William’s test, I was worried about the work I had to do the next morning, I was worried about getting packed for my trip later in the week and, frankly, I was worried I would never leave this field, that it was my new home, that this place was in fact where humanity would find itself encased until the end of time. This is where future alien beings will find the final remnants of what was once the human race, where it would learn who we were, how we lived, what we valued, just how many hot dogs we did, in fact, eat.

I stood next to another parent, the father of one of William’s teammates, a kid a couple of years older than him: William has reached the age that when I leave one of his games I discover I’m parked next to the third baseman.

The parent heard me huff and saw me check my watch. He patted me on the back, not unkindly.

“Don’t rush this,” he said. “You’re gonna miss it.”

He continued.

“This is my boy’s last year. We’ve been coming out here since he was a four-year-old in T-ball. Now we’ve only got a couple of games left. And then it’s over.”

He patted me on the back again.

“You’ll wish, someday soon, you could still come out here with him,” he said, looking past me now, out onto the field. “But you won’t be able to. It’ll be over.”

I stopped checking my watch after that.

---

Last year, in an interview on Mike Birbiglia’s podcast “Working It Out,” Bob Odenkirk was asked who he was jealous of in the world. His answer, which you can watch here, will stick in your head forever.

Here’s the full answer:

“Who am I jealous of? Anybody who’s still got little kids at home growing up. There’s no question: I knew what I was doing when I had kids growing up. I was being a dad. I mean, that was my job, and I didn’t have to ask myself ‘What am I doing here? How can I be a part of this world? How can I be meaningful today?’ I didn’t have to ask that question because the fucking answer is ‘Pick up everything between here and the door and make sure they get to school and have a laugh with them.’ Life was-... I understood my purpose.”

You know, out of all the things that I do, what I am actually best at in this world? I am the best at: Picking up clothes off the floor; and Turning off all the lights. I am amazing at these things. There is nothing on this planet that I have ever been better at than those two things. I do them without thinking, but still with incredible skill. I never miss. There are always clothes on the floor, and there are always lights left on, and it is my job to pick the clothes up, and to turn the lights off. I do it every day, and I am fucking unstoppable at it. You know how Shaq used to dunk so hard that he’d pull down the rim and stanchion and everything? That’s how I am with clothes on the floor and with lights that are left on. There has never been anyone better.

And soon: I will have to retire. Time comes for us all. Even the greats.

My son William has, as of this exact second, five days left of middle school. His brother has five days and two more years left of middle school. But they already have one foot out the door. You can see it: They need me a little bit less every year. They’re not pulling away, not consciously, not purposefully. But I am less a part of their lives today than I was yesterday, and tomorrow I will be less of a part of their lives than I am today.

When I look back at high school, where my sons will both be so soon, I do not think of my parents, other than the things I wanted to do outside of them, away from them, the need to build my own life that didn’t have them at the center of it. This is natural. This is how it is supposed to happen. This is what I want to have happen.

But it is one thing to want it to happen, to know that it must. It is another to live it.

This summer, at some point, my son and I will get in my car, and I will drive it to the parking lot of a mostly abandoned mall on the outskirts of town. I will put the car in park, and I will open up my door, and he will open up his, and we will switch sides. He will, for the first time, drive. He will get better. Which will allow him to go farther. And then he will be gone. And then his brother will do the same thing.

My fellow dad at the baseball game, he was excellent at reminding me that I must live in the present, and that’s always good advice. But even he could not deny that the present is, in its own way, already gone. He missed it, I missed it too, we were too busy trying to get home from yet another late night at the ballpark, there’s a test tomorrow, I’ve got that project due, I’m traveling Wednesday, there’s so much, there’s just so much to do. And the next thing you know that four-year-old whose helmet falls over his eyes when he runs to first base is driving himself home from the game and is touring campuses and is graduating and is gone and there are no more clothes to pick up off the floor and there are no more lights to turn off. What were we in such a hurry for? How is it already gone?

There are two final Little League baseball games this week. I hope they are close, and tight, and maybe even tied, and that they go into extra innings and maybe, all told, I’ll be all right if they’ll just go ahead and not end at all.

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 Late Show” Was Never “The Colbert Report” The Washington Post. I was very happy with how this piece turned out. Here’s your reminder to sign up for that free weekly newsletter with each of those columns, every Thursday morning, by the way. Right here. Free!

2. What’s With These World Cup Ticket Prices? New York. Eventually they’re going to go down. Probably soon!

3. Oliver Marmol Has Figured It All Out, MLB.com. How the once-embattled manager because a franchise stalwart.

4. Your Guide to Rivalry Weekend, MLB.com. Well it’s already half over now.

5. This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. Don’t like seeing the Cubs No. 1.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, talking “The Sheep Detectives” and previewing the Cannes Film Festival. I’m doing a short solo show this weekend.

Morning Lineup, I was off this week.

Seeing Red, Bernie and I talked about an exciting Cardinals team.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“In Beijing, a lame-duck president personified the decline of American power,” Franklin Foer, The Atlantic. Pretty depressing to watch that, and the aftermath, all told.

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! I am behind on these again but catching up this week

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Let’s Dance to Joy Division,” The Wombats. Let’s celebrate the irony that everything is going wrong but we're so happy!

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!

I suspect the shirtless Cardinals fan thing that started at Busch Stadium last night, TARPS OFF, is about to become a thing.

I greatly enjoyed Sacramento. You should go sometime!

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will