From the Road: Day 5
Wrapping up the first week of the BIG FAN tour.
Fabulous night in Kansas City as we wind up our first week on the BIG FAN Tour. Saw so many old friends. Relived so many old memories. Told the Mookie Story (which is clocking in at 15 minutes now … we might get to the point where the whole show is just us telling the Mookie story).
We kid Jason Kander here a lot, but Jason’s a good friend and a good man, and he did a great job running the show. My favorite part was when he read a long passage I wrote in the book and tried to make the point that I tend to get away with writing long, discursive, absurdly intricate sentences. He then asked Mike, “How does Joe get away with it?”
And it was a good question, with only the slight catch that Mike actually wrote the sentence he’d read.
He managed to save the question somehow. The guy’s a pro.
The first week tour ends tonight in Los Angeles — Hermosa Beach, specifically — and it’s going to be a lot of fun with our pal Justin Halpern at the helm. I’m not going to lie, though: I’m tired. We’re tired. Dave Barry always says that the one sure thing that happens on book tours is that sooner or later, you, the author, will end up hating your own book. We’re not there, but we are tired. Travel, interviews, shows, being on all the time will take it out of you.
But the funny thing is, I never feel tired on stage or when meeting with Brilliant Readers. I think it’s something I picked up over the years from Buck O’Neil. Behind the scenes, I’d see him be SO tired. I mean, he was 93 years old when I traveled America with him.
But when he was speaking, when he was meeting people, when he was telling his stories, he was alive, he was vibrant, he was so energized. I used to think that this was just Buck being Buck — he never wanted to disappoint even a single person he met — and in some ways that was true. Buck was always Buck.
But there was something else: People powered Buck. Stories powered Buck. Being out there powered Buck. I feel that. There is something that supercharges you about being among people, telling stories, hearing laughter, connecting. At every stop, people have told us how much we mean to them — how Parks and Recreation got them through the pandemic, how my writing made them want to become a writer, how The Good Place is their happy show, how they read the Baseball 100 or Why We Love Baseball to their children at bedtime — and it’s so humbling that neither Mike or I can quite process it.
And yet, it’s also exactly why we wrote this book about fandom together.
The whole point is to pump some joy into this crazy world.
And being around that joy is the best. It will be just as wonderful tonight in LA as it was last night in Kansas City, as it was the night before in St. Louis.
Hopefully, I can sleep on the plane.
The Angels have the worst record in baseball, and Mike Trout is eighth in the American League in WAR, and this will never stop being so sad.
Do we need to start talking about Matt Olson as a Hall of Fame candidate? I mean, you don’t want to jump the gun, but he just hit his 300th home run, he’s played in like 800 straight games, and he’s leading the league in doubles, RBI and total bases. He’s at 42 or so WAR — four or five more good seasons puts him pretty much on the Paul Goldschmidt road to Cooperstown.
Freddie Freeman is already Cooperstown-bound — and while Freeman wasn’t technically swapped for Olson, he sort of was. I was trying to think: Has there ever been a one-for-one Hall of Famer trade?
Speaking of one-for-one Hall of Famer trades, someone asked Mike a fascinating question: Let’s say that the famous Joe DiMaggio for Ted Williams swap had happened. How does Mike think that would have affected his fandom?
Mike said it probably wouldn’t have affected his fandom at all — he’d still be a Red Sox fan and still abhor the Yankees — but I said that it WOULD have affected his fandom in this way: He would now be the one walking around telling everyone that Joe DiMaggio never threw to the wrong base and totally deserved those MVP awards over Williams because of his all-around game.
It’s such a wild quirk of fandom. In 1992, the New York Yankees selected Derek Jeter with the sixth pick in the draft, and Derek Jeter is the baseball player that Mike loathes most of all. When someone asked Mike on Thursday which player he would consign to the bad place, he said “Derek Jeter” without even hesitating.
But what if Jeter had come out in 1993 instead? The Red Sox had the seventh pick. What if they had taken Derek Jeter?
If that was the case, I feel certain Mike Schur would have 500 Derek Jeter jerseys in his closet right now.
We met a lovely woman on Thursday named Becky Beck.
I told her she must really love him to take that on.
The less said about the Knicks’ destruction of the Cavaliers Thursday night, the better. But it’s worth pointing out again just how weird a player James Harden is. On the surface, he didn’t have a bad game. After his turnover-palooza on Tuesday, he didn’t turn it over even once. He scored 18, grabbed six boards, made three of seven from three-point land, had a couple of assists and a couple of steals, etc.
He was minus-22 for the game.
That’s not always the most meaningful statistic, but in the case of Harden, I think it is. The Cavs were just not any good with him on the floor, particularly on the defensive end.
For your next HOF conversation … Dwight Evans, yea or nay? You’ve probably already talked about him, and I just don’t remember. Still …