An Essay About Something? Nothing?

A sketchpad of thoughts about time, attention, talk radio, and (maybe?) what really matters.

Today’s essay is weird and doesn’t get into stuff like the Phillies firing Rob Thomson and promoting Don Mattingly or Nick Kurtz walking in 17 consecutive games. We’ll get to all that in the next couple of days.

Today’s essay is not even an essay, really. It’s more like a sketchpad with scribbles of me trying to solve a puzzle, something that has been filling my mind for a while. I wouldn’t blame you at all for skipping it.

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A quick personal story: Way, way back in the late 1990s, I used to listen to local sports talk radio for hours every single day. This was in Kansas City, when I was a sports columnist for the Star, and I felt like I needed to listen for professional reasons, but I was also kind of hooked on it. There’s a kinetic energy in sports talk radio. It triggers emotions. It forms bonds. And, for me, there was the added bonus that someone might call in to talk about something I wrote in the paper.

Once, when I was driving to the ballpark, I was listening to sports talk, and I heard an interview with Royals reliever Jeff Montgomery, who, it’s fair to say, was fairly unhappy with something I had written about him. By that, I mean he wanted to pound me into the ground. When I got to the ballpark, I sought him out, and he and I went into the stairwell by the clubhouse, and he wrapped a towel around his hand for some reason, and um, well, he nonviolently but theatrically expressed his relative displeasure with my column. When he finished, I walked out (ashen, I’m sure) to find three different camera crews eager to interview me about our “conversation.” I guess it was pretty loud.*

*I, of course, did not talk to any of them — what happens in the Royals clubhouse stairwell stays in the Royals’ Clubhouse stairwell. Jeff and I are now good friends

That’s an extreme example, but I would listen to talk radio every day because I felt like I should, and I felt like it made me better informed, and I got a certain kick out of it.

Then one day, I realized that I really, really, really didn’t like how listening to talk radio made me feel. I didn’t like that I heard callers’ voices in my head when I wrote. I didn’t like that I started to think about how my column would play on talk radio the next day. I didn’t like how, for me, talk radio smeared nuance into a black-and-white smudge. I didn’t like that I was losing my favorite part of writing, which is discovery. I loved the feeling of starting a column with one opinion and then realizing, halfway through, actually, no, I believe the exact opposite.

Talk radio was taking that away from me.

And the next day, I stopped listening. Cold turkey. And I have almost never listened to sports talk radio since.*

*I say “almost” because sometimes I’m in the car with someone who is listening, and I don’t want to be rude. Also, sometimes ESPN’s version of sports talk television is on the screen when I’m in a restaurant or getting my hair cut (yes, I get my hair cut at Sports Clips, believe me, when you’ve been balding since age 21, you aren’t picky).

I have absolutely nothing against sports talk radio. Quite the opposite. I appear on shows all the time and enjoy it. I am in awe of how the best hosts, like my longtime friend Dan LeBatard, turn sports talk into art. I have friends who live for the daily buzz; it adds joy to their lives. I love that.

It’s just not for me.

I think about this a lot right now because, well, in the next year or so, I will turn 60. I will have two books come out. BIG FAN, the book I wrote with Mike Schur about what it means to be a fan, will be published in about two weeks. FIFTY SEASONS: Stories of the Baseball Years That Echo will come out early in 2027.*

*I am looking right now at two covers for FIFTY SEASONS, and they’re both awesome, and I have shared them with a bunch of friends who are directly split down the middle about which one we should use. It’s like that, “Is the dress blue/black or white/gold” thing that swept the nation, yikes, more than ten years ago. Every time I get a text from a friend saying, “I like this one,” I almost immediately get a text from another friend saying, “I like that one.” When we pick the winning cover, I’ll ask the publisher if they’ll let me show you both.

And none of that is the big news in my life, because in the next year or so, our younger daughter will graduate from college, and our older daughter will get married. This will be the most meaningful year of Margo's and my life.

I tell you all this because, well, hey, we’re friends, right?

But I also tell you all this because I have this powerful feeling that I need to do something to get ready for this year, something important, but also something that I can’t quite name. I feel like I need to unplug from this talk radio world that we all live in now and just, I don’t know, live life?

Does that make sense to you?

I don’t know how it can make sense to you when it doesn’t even make sense to me.

But I feel it deeply, the same way I felt deeply my need to stop listening to sports talk radio. I feel like I want to reclaim something — time, focus, the freedom to live in the moment without the anger, anxiety, confusion, division, and clanging distraction that surrounds us at every turn. I want to appreciate small moments. I want to appreciate quiet. I want to regain that particular joy of being bored.

I can’t slow down the world, none of us can.

But maybe I can slow down my world?

Or is that just the foolish thought that comes with getting older?

I have thoughts about unplugging. Lots of people have thoughts about unplugging, I have found, and I have watched a bunch of their “How to unplug” videos, which, alas, seem like the opposite of unplugging. I have tried to trim the technology in my life, tried to keep my phone on Do Not Disturb, tried spending more of my time writing with fountain pens and typing on a Hermes 3000 manual typewriter. I have tried to cut out social media. I have tried not to obsess over the latest news.

I have tried to drive more. I seem to do some of my best thinking when I drive.

Maybe there’s a clue there. I don’t know.

And that’s the point: I don’t know. I just know that I want to spend as many minutes as I can in the next year enjoying what is happening, appreciating the lucky life I am living, celebrating the amazing young women our daughters have become, and meeting the incredible people who have somehow come into my world.

I want to find a better way to connect. Maybe that’s it?

I got this email the other day from a woman named Becky, and I just want to share it, not just because of how much it touched me, but because it gets to the heart of something:

I’m a new volunteer at the VA Hospital in Kerrville, Texas. My assignment is to read to one of the veterans in long-term care--a man who used to play baseball and has a lifelong interest in it. When we started, I “happened” to find your book Why We Love Baseball in our public library. It’s the perfect book for reading aloud. We finished it last week, and today started The Baseball 100.

I want you to know how wonderful this has been. This veteran is not able to speak or walk--but he can hear, and he responds to the stories with smiles, bright eyes, and once a laugh. The recreation therapist who goes in the room with me is also a veteran and a big baseball fan. He answers all my questions. (I’m a retired high school English teacher who came to this with no baseball knowledge beyond playing it at recess in grade school.)

So--thank you for these books. And know that your words are being enjoyed by three fans here in Kerrville.

I mean: How can you read that and not feel humbled … but also hopeful and heartened and convinced that all these algorithms and doom-pushers do not define us. I don’t think there’s any one thing I can just quit, the way I quit sports talk radio, in order to shake free. But maybe I’ll start by getting rid of my Apple Watch. I mean, you have to start somewhere.