Father's Day Fun!

OK, this Sunday is Father’s Day, but rather than wait to write some Father’s Day stuff, I’m going to write up a Dad-centric post right now. I’m doing this because, if I know you — and I think I do — you haven’t bought Dad a gift yet. Come on — admit it. Come clean. So I’ll give you a couple of gift ideas, and I’ll talk about a couple of friends who have been sort of father figures and, what the heck, maybe I’ll even tell you a quick story about my dad.

Gift idea: WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL!

OK, yeah, I’ll start with the selfish stuff — Father’s Day is the deadline for the Rainy Day WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL personal inscription deal. As you no doubt know by now, if you preorder my new book, WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL, by Sunday, I will sign it and personalize it with any message, dedication or epigraph you want, even if it hurts my heart to write the words, such as all you people who have made me praise the Yankees*, St. Louis-style pizza or the song “Centerfield.”

*One of you simply made me write the word RE2PECT, which I have to admit is sort of genius. I can’t tell you how much it stung to write that word.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret now, because we are actually doing something here that I think is super cool. Because so many people are requesting signed and inscribed books, we are using a technique with “tip sheets.” Yeah, I didn’t know what tip sheets were, either. They’re special pages that the publisher sent me. I am signing and inscribing those pages, then I will send them back to the publisher, and they will be bound INTO YOUR BOOK.

Isn’t that cool? In other words, you are not only getting your book signed and inscribed, you are actually getting a special WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL published JUST FOR YOU.

Tip sheets, I’m told, are done fairly often, but they’re normally used just for signatures — that’s relatively easy, because every signed book is the same. I’m not sure that personalized tip sheets have ever been done before. And the only reason we can do it is because of the dedication of Geoffrey and the amazing people at Rainy Day Books — they’re going to literally go through every single book to make sure that the right book gets sent to you. It’s a staggering puzzle, all so that we can get you a book with me saying something like, “Joey Votto will be in the next edition of The Baseball 100.”*

*Several of you have asked me to inscribe something about Joey, and each time I made sure to send Joey a copy of the inscription — he would like me to remind you that he’s not retired yet.

For the record, Rainy Day will still be taking preorders all the way up to pub date on Sept. 5, and I’m going to try and do something cool and unique with each of those books as well (still working on the concept). But if you want the personal inscription and your own specially printed book, you have to preorder by Sunday.

“I know this gift is late, Dad,” one person had me write. “But I believe it will be worth it.”

Farewell, Bill James Online

I don’t think Bill would want me calling him a father figure, because he’s not that much older than me. But Bill means the world to me. I know full well that he’s probably ticked you off once or twice or 500 times. On Monday, he announced that he is ending Bill James Online — and even on what should have been a day to remember, he somehow managed to tick off a beloved baseball Hall of Famer.

Some of it, I think, is just Bill being misunderstood.

And some of it, yeah, is his nature. He’s cantankerous. He likes to mix it up. He doesn’t suffer fools or people he perceives as fools. And his first reaction to anything and everything is always, always, always to be the contrarian. Always. I’ve never, not once, offered a theory to Bill that he accepted or simply let go. No, he always comes back by picking apart the argument. Like I say, it’s his nature. And, I think he knows, that doesn’t always serve him well.

It’s also a big part of his genius. He was the first to ask a staggering number of questions about baseball that either nobody wanted to ask or had thought to ask. In asking those questions, he stomped out quite a bit of BS in the game.

But if I know Bill at all, I know that he believes that there’s as much BS in baseball now as there has ever been. In his mind, BS doesn’t get stomped out — it simply gets replaced by more BS. I think that’s what led him to tweet this out.

Now, if you read this through, it is a clear criticism of “new” baseball thinkers who — and I’ll include myself in this — have turned away from wins, RBIs and batting average and even called them pointless and meaningless. He is saying that we’re no different from the people who refuse to embrace advanced statistics.

Funny, Bill is often credited/blamed for moving fans beyond those old-fashioned stats, but he never wanted that. I think Bill loves those stats because they’re a big part of baseball history, and they do tell us things. He just doesn’t like people using them to say things they don’t say. He feels exactly the same way about more advanced stats.

Anyway, because he’s Bill James, Rod Carew read that tweet and took exactly the opposite message from it.

I love Rod Carew … and hate that he feels this way. He’s one of the greatest players of all time — No. 57 in the Baseball 100 — and he certainly has every right to complain about the way baseball is played now and complain that only people who played the game at the highest level should have any say in the game. Yesterday’s players griping about today’s game is a tale as old as time.

But, alas, I think he’s barking at the wrong person here. Bill, I feel sure, has spent every bit as much time, and probably more, thinking about baseball as Rod Carew. Bill loves the game every bit as much as Rod Carew. Baseball evolves because the globe keeps on spinning, because players get bigger, stronger and faster, because more information becomes available, because innovators keep trying to find ways to win. Carew might long for a game that more resembles 1977, when pitchers threw nine, and batting average reigned, and there were three television channels, which meant that America stopped for the World Series.

Maybe a lot of us would like to have some of that back.

But, like I say, the world does keep on spinning.

Anyway, Bill announced that he’s ending Bill James Online, which makes me both intensely sad and very happy. It makes me sad because I love Bill James Online, I go there every single day to read Bill’s latest thoughts, his most recent brainstorm, nothing animates my baseball mind more than a Bill essay. Every single time I read one, it gives me like five ideas for what I’d like to do here at JoeBlogs. Like, a couple of days ago, he tried to figure out which pitcher in baseball history faced the most formidable set of opposing pitchers. It’s typically fascinating.

So, yes, I’m going to miss Bill James Online very, very much.

Maybe I can get Bill to write a little something here, now and again?

But here’s why it makes me happy: Ending Bill James Online will allow Bill to work on bigger projects that he’s been thinking about, but putting off, for years. One of those projects is doing a new version of The New Bill James Historical Abstract, which I think is the best baseball book ever written. Bill says it’s not his TOP priority, but it’s up there, and he’s told me numerous times through the years that he’d like to take one more crack at it.

Let me just say that there are two books that I want to read so badly that I can barely contain myself. One is the final Lyndon Johnson book in Robert Caro’s remarkable series. And the other is The New Bill James Historical Abstract. Unfortunately, I’ve never met Caro, so I haven’t been able to tell this to him personally (though about 12 quajillion other people have). But I do know Bill, and I have told him, and I will tell him again, because I think he’s brilliant.

I also think he’s one of the most decent and loyal friends anyone can have, and I love him. Happy Father’s Day, Bill.

Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends (and your Dad)!

Gift idea: Who’s Your Founding Father?

Your dad likes history, right? Of course, he does: He’s your dad. Or maybe you’re the dad, in which case, you like history.

Well, let me just tell you: My pal Dave Fleming’s book about the Mecklenburg Declaration — the Meck Dec! — will bring you so much joy. Trust me on this one. The book is hilarious, it’s eye-opening, it’s a mystery, it will change everything you know about the founding of this country.

OK, that might be overselling things — it won’t change EVERYTHING you know. But it will certainly give you a whole new set of founding father heroes (and crackpots!) to cherish and celebrate. And it will make you laugh so much.

Dave Kindred’s Home Team

I’m going to take you back to 1994. I was the sports columnist for The Augusta Chronicle, and in Augusta, you measured time by the number of Masters that went by. I had just finished my third Masters, and I was growing more and more convinced that I would be stuck in Augusta forever. It was a pretty harrowing thought. My first steady girlfriend had moved away. My best friend had moved away. I felt like the world was passing me by. I was despondent.

And then, one day, I saw a letter in my work mail slot. Usually such letters were sent to complain about something I had written, but this was nice card stock, and I opened it up without looking at the name on the return address.

It read — and I am paraphrasing, even though I’ve kept the card in my files all these years — “I read everything you wrote during the Masters, and I admired it all.”

And it was signed: “Dave Kindred.”

There have been a few life-changing moments in my career — and this was one of them. Dave was already legendary, one of the great sports columnists in America, a hero of mine. I’d never met him, because I was too nervous to meet him. So when I saw that card, it altered so much about how I felt about myself. How bad could I be if DAVE KINDRED liked my work?

I called Dave to thank him for the card and tell him how much it meant to me. And that son of a gun, you know what he said to me? He said: “Oh, good, I was worried.” He was actually worried that I would read that card and not think anything of it. That’s how modest Dave Kindred is.

Probably a month later, Dave (without telling me) cold-called Cincinnati Post sports editor Mark Tomasik and recommended me for their columnist job. Mark hired me. When I tell you that Dave utterly changed my life, I do not exaggerate even slightly.

I am now reading Dave’s upcoming memoir, My Home Team, about his life as a sportswriter (what a life — Muhammad Ali and Adolph Rupp and Munich in ’72 and George Allen and Pete Rose and …) and how he found joy and triumph in his later years writing about the Morton High School Lady Potters basketball team in Morton, Ill. The book is spectacular and has reminded me how lucky I am to call Dave a friend.

A decade ago, I asked a bunch of friends to give me 100 words on their favorite athlete. It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing again — anyway, Dave wrote about Muhammad Ali. And this is what he wrote:

I am asked to keep it short. Fewer than 100 words. On Muhammad Ali? I wrote a book on him, 128,000 words. I can do this. Best athlete I ever saw, ever will see. Smartest man in every room, couldn’t spell. Cruel when his game demanded he be cruel, kind every day of his life. Anyway, my cardiologist knows I love Ali. I do a stress test. Doc’s report: "You float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." Ali, too, could keep it short. At Harvard graduation ceremony, 1975, someone asked for a poem. Ali answered, "Me, whee!"

Happy (early) Father’s Day! Just a reminder that Joe Blogs is a reader-supported newsletter, and I’d love and appreciate your support.

And if you’d like to give your Dad the gift of Joe Blogs, well, you can do that right here:

Gift idea: The Book of Charlie

You have probably heard of this book — it’s been a bestseller since it came out — but I’m here to tell you: Believe the hype. My buddy David Von Drehle wrote about his Kansas City neighbor, Charlie White, who lived to be 109 — and wow, those 109 years were something.

Only get this one for your dad if he likes laughing, crying, remembering, reading or feeling things.

The Father Picture of the Day

There are a million super-cool photos out there now of Nikola Jokić and his too-cute-to-be-real daughter, Ognjena, but I particularly like this one, with the confetti coming down, with Nikola pointing up to something and her eyes following, it makes me so incredibly happy and so incredibly sad thinking about holding our daughters just like this.

Game 5 of the NBA Finals was hard to watch — I don’t know if it really is as simple as the Miami Heat, knowing there was no other way to compete, turning it into an ugly street fight, but they turned it into an ugly street fight. At one point, and I could have this wrong, the Denver Nuggets were 1-for-1,483,491 from three-point range. They also committed 783 turnovers. They also missed 533 free throws. It was a train wreck.

But, like always, there was Jokić. He didn’t have one of his better games. He committed a silly foul that took him out of the game for a while. He committed four turnovers, and a couple of them were really bad ones. The Heat did a good job of taking away his passing lanes, and he had “only” four assists.

Still, he was the rock that kept the Nuggets from falling off the cliff. He made 12 of 16 shots. He grabbed 16 rebounds. He contested shots. And he never seemed to let frustration take over. I don’t know what’s happening in Serbia, but at this moment, the best tennis player on earth and the best basketball player on earth are both Serbian, and they seem to attack their games the same way — with a heightened intelligence and sixth sense* for what will happen next.

*They see dead people.

I really did grow to despise that Heat team — feeding off Mike Schur’s rabid hatred and the horrifying fanhood of the goons at Meadowlark Media — but, yeah, like most athletes/teams I despise, there’s a grudging admiration that I don’t like talking about. That Heat team had no business getting out of the first round of the playoffs. Heck, they were barely good enough to get INTO the first round of the playoffs.

But they play so absurdly hard, and their coach, Erik Spoelstra*, is really some kind of evil mastermind, and there’s something ticking inside Jimmy Butler that is hard to quantify. Butler was disastrously bad on Monday night, and yet when the game looked over, he made consecutive threes, somehow coaxed the officials to let him shoot free throws after he kicked a defender and just about brought the Heat back in it.

*Do you find it as disconcerting as I do that every time the camera closes in on Spoelstra, he seems to be smiling a little bit? It’s an unsettling smile, too, one that says, “I know what’s going to happen next, and I’m not worried.” Spoelstra is probably my number one coach in sports right now under the category of, “I can’t stand that guy but if he were coaching MY team, I’d love him enough to keep a photo of him under my pillow.”

Anyway, I’m glad the Nuggets won, and I’m glad it was relatively easy, and I’m glad that I got to watch my newest sports icon, Nikola Jokić, play basketball every couple of nights. Congratulations, Denver.

A king’s chair for Father’s Day

It’s time to get my Dad a new recliner. This is a Father’s Day tradition in my family. We bought him a recliner for Father’s Day a few years ago, and he’s worn that thing out, and it’s time again to take him to a furniture store and have him sit in some chairs and pick one out that suits him.

The funny part is the last time we did this, he settled on … well, the biggest recliner any of us had ever seen. It was this massive thing. It was bigger than the Iron Throne. I’m not entirely sure, but I think it came with its own jester. I’m fairly sure that the care instructions also included step-by-step directions for how to properly drop grapes in the chair-bearer’s mouth.

Anyway, we didn’t get him that chair. I think we weren’t even sure it would fit through the door of their house. But we talk about that chair all the time, because he really wanted it, and I sort of regret not getting it for him. I am whatever I am because of him (and Mom, of course, but this isn’t Mother’s Day). He taught me baseball. He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. He showed me the power of hard work. He demonstrated how to be a great father.

If he wants to feel like a king when he sits down to watch the Game Show Network, who am I to deny him that feeling?

Maybe they’ll have a slightly smaller king chair for sale this time around.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

And, as Ralph Kiner (sort of) said, to all you father’s out there: Happy Birthday!