Wait! Another Letter from Tom Hanks?

A few months ago, you might remember, I got a fan letter from Tom Hanks. It was an utterly surreal, once-in-a-lifetime moment, and obviously, I wanted to figure out a way to celebrate it. This was tricky. That letter, typewritten, of course—Tom Hanks is probably America’s most famous typewriter guy—was written on a typewriter scroll, which makes it quite a bit taller than Eddie Gaedel.*

*The letter is roughly the same height as 4-foot-5 Charlie Hughes, a good-fielding middle infielder for several Negro leagues teams in the 1930s. 

After much deliberation, we decided to custom-frame the letter as is, without cutting between the pages. It took quite a long time to do that, but, last week, it was finished, and I love the way it came out. Now that letter is next to my typewriter desk in a corner nook of my office, and for the last few days, I have walked over a bunch of different times just to read a section or two.

Yes, that’s our “That Thing You Do” poster right next to it. Pretty great, right?

That seems like a pretty good way to end our brush-with-celebrity story.

Except, I went to get the mail yesterday. And …

Yeah, that’s right. I got ANOTHER letter from Tom Hanks.

This one is also four pages long, but it’s typed on normal-sized stationery, so it’s ACTUALLY four pages. And I’m freaking out all over again.

I thought I’d give you a few highlights of the letter—I don’t think he’d mind. As you can see in the photo, he wrote it in London, where he found himself thinking and dreaming of baseball (though as you can also see, he does enjoy football and is a fan of Aston Villa). Among other things, he wrote:

— He saw a bat-and-ball game being played in Hyde Park that he believes was rounders, and mused about that being the true antecedent of baseball. (Note to self: Write back a bit about the marvelous history of people arguing about baseball’s roots.)

— He says that these days he’s a Dodgers fan, not out of great love for the Dodgers—he has in his life been a fan of Oakland, Cleveland, Seattle and his son Colin is a huge Giants fan—but because it’s where he has lived for 35 years and the only team he could watch 10 or 20 times a season. “In fact, though,” he adds, “I root for extra innings.”

— I have to quote this verbatim because, I mean, I think I told you: Tom Hanks is one of us: “You ever been on a drive across the country and saw the lights of some local night game and stop for a burger from the local Kiwanis Club and a few pitches? Heaven.”

— He gave me his definitive opinion of whether Dottie drops the ball on purpose at the end of “League of Their Own.” I’m going to keep that one to myself for now.

— He said that the two movies he would make over again are “League of Their Own” and “That Thing You Do.” These just happen to be my two favorite Tom Hanks movies, though I feel the same way about Tom Hanks that Bob Dylan felt about Gregory Peck in the brilliant song, “Brownsville Girl”: “I’ll see him in anything.”

“There is not a moment of either movie that I did not love doing,” he wrote.

— When I wrote back to him the last time, I asked him about a very specific moment that is so obscure, I imagine only one or two of you will get it (but you two will get a huge thrill out of it): One of the most memorable sports moments of my entire childhood (a barren sports childhood in Cleveland, I admit) was watching Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari, in the show “Bosom Buddies,” throwing the football around while Tom shouted, “Brian Sipe to throw! Ozzie Newsome is open! Touchdown!” I so vividly remember this moment because (1) That sounded EXACTLY like me as a Cleveland kid, and (2) Having both my favorite quarterback, Brian Sipe, and all-time hero, Ozzie Newsome, mentioned on one of my favorite sitcoms was like having a ton of dopamine flood my brain all at once.

But did it happen? Am I remembering it right?

Tom wrote two things about it. One, he did not specifically remember that moment, but he suspected it was true, because he and Peter were given free rein to chuffa—a comedy term that sort of means ad-lib but goes deeper than that. Tom typed “chuffa” in red ink, which is delightful.

Two, he said it’s probably true because they had decided that the characters, Kip and Henry, had grown up in Cleveland—specifically in Shaker Heights—so that Tom could lob a few Cleveland references into the dialogue. (Tom worked summers at the Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland during the late 1970s, and he can to this day name the entire Tribe lineup from those days.)

One other thing: Tom signed the letter saying he’d like to get together for a doubleheader but, “until then, Skitch, how did we get here?”

I’m spent. That’s all I can say, really.