How ABS Challenges Are Changing the Game
And incredible starts by Mike Trout and Mason Miller are making baseball more fun.
Here’s your Friday splash of joy — some of your favorite baseball cards:
Brilliant Reader Michael: The 1986 Topps Dwight Gooden N.L. All-Star was in the first pack of cards I ever opened. I’m a diehard Bosox fan from birth, but a young Doc looking off into the distance as if nothing could possibly phase him, against the backdrop of a spring training practice field, captured the thrill of possibility that a fresh baseball season offered to a six-year-old who was just starting to love the game.
Brilliant Reader Mark: This card is so wild and wonderful. It makes no sense and I wish every player on the team posed with the glove
Brilliant Reader Kendall: Greg Gagne '89 Donruss. Is it pronounced Gone-yay? Or Gag-knee? Either way, my best friend and I loved this card as sarcastic 9-year-olds. It's supposed to be an action shot of him swinging, but he's very clearly looking straight at the camera and grinning. Makes me laugh every time.
Big book day today — I’m hoping to “finish” SEASONS … I have just a couple of small sections to write. I put “finish” in quotation marks because the book will not actually be finished; I’m going to have to lock myself in a room for the next week and do the hard rewrite of every single chapter. Fortunately, this is my favorite part of the process; I love it when I have already written the entire book, and all that’s left is to work and rework and adjust and kill the darlings and finish. It’s hard, but it’s so deeply satisfying.
SEASONS will be coming out in 2027 — and, quite possibly, super-early 2027. I cannot believe I’m going to have two books coming out within just a few months of each other.
And that’s the second awesome book thing today: A finished copy of BIG FAN should be arriving in my mailbox (and Mike’s mailbox too!). There’s nothing like that author feeling of seeing your book for the first time. In exactly one month, I’ll be having a special pre-tour early-bird book launch event — details to come for those of you who either (A) Happen to live in or around Charlotte or (B) Would like to just fly in to say hello.
Oh, and have you seen this super-fun little trailer for BIG FAN? Turn up the music! It cracks me up every time. I’m still hoping that Dutton gives us that car.
OK, time for the Clubhouse. Inside, we look and see just how impactful ABS overturns (spoiler alert: they’re pretty darned impactful) and gawk at two remarkable baseball players doing remarkable things.
The Clubhouse door is open below — and if you ever feel like joining us in The Clubhouse — not for more, exactly, but to be a bigger part of our world — we’d love to have you.
