Whew

On finishing FIFTY SEASONS, and why I rewrote the whole thing for you.

Hi Everyone —

Whew. That’s the word for today. Whew. On Monday, after three weeks of basically nonstop writing, I sent in the final version of FIFTY SEASONS. Whew.

I did something with this book that I’ve never done before — I completely rewrote it after first draft. To be clear, my wonderful editor John did not ask me to completely rewrite it. He liked the version I sent in. I liked the version I sent in. He sent me some notes to work on; I could have simply worked on those notes, polished the book up, and sent it in a month ago. It would have been a good book, I think.

That’s how all my other books have worked.

But — and I know this will sound like pandering, but I mean it — I kept thinking about you Brilliant Readers. I kept thinking how this is the book so many of you have always wanted me to do, a book that is personal and a bit random and filled with the spirit of baseball that lifts our hearts. A book with room for Willie Mays AND Joe Charboneau AND Shohei Ohtani AND the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card AND Steve Dalkowski AND Old Hoss Radbourn AND The Natural AND baseball on the radio AND Matt “The Scat” Alexander AND Mark Fidrych AND .406 AND an astonishing new character in Negro Leagues lore AND Babe Ruth.

Shortly after I started to work over the first draft, I came up with the idea that unlocked all of it, the idea would allow me to write THAT book.

It was a big idea. It would mean a complete rewrite. It would mean doing a bunch more research. It would mean throwing out tens of thousands of words. It would mean, in some ways, starting over and writing a whole new book in less than a month.

And while the World Cup is going on, no less!

And I did it. I honestly did it because of you.

Whew.

Over the next few months — the book comes out February 2 — I’ll tell you a lot more about FIFTY SEASONS, to the point where you’re sick of it (sorry, that’s just what we do here). We’ll release the cover very soon. We’ll announce our signed preorder campaign soon too. Plus, I have SO MUCH leftover stuff, chapter after chapter that I cut from the book, that we’ll make sure everybody who preorders gets a Director’s Cut collection of those chapters (so if you do decide to preorder now, be sure to SAVE YOUR RECEIPT!).

For now, I just want to thank you for being a JoeBlogs reader. I hear such nice things from so many of you, and it’s humbling, but the truth is that you inspire me. We’ll have to see how FIFTY SEASONS turns out, of course, but in the afterglow I am so proud of it, so happy that I could write this book for you, and also so, so tired. When I got home Monday night, after 12 consecutive hours of writing and polishing and researching and digging deep for the best words I could muster, I was on the verge of collapse.

Then I watched the U.S. World Cup team play and thought, “Well, OK, they collapsed for me.”

I kid. Sort of. That was a brutal performance, right?

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If you’re in the Los Angeles area, our great pal and co-author Mike Schur will be doing a BIG FAN event at one of our favorite bookstores, Chevalier’s. I totally wish I could be there, but you know, Los Angeles is a bit of a drive, and also I had another book to finish. But that’s OK; he’ll be joined by the amazing Mike O’Malley, which will be better. I’ve already told Mike that I hope they spend at least half the time talking about Justified, Season Four. Anyway, that will be a lot of fun; go check them out.