Baseball: My Useful Distraction
Focusing on things other than my writing career has proved helpful.
On Sunday, I was crowned a champion.
A champion of my adult softball league, that is. After a 5-5 record in the regular season, my team went 4-0 in the playoffs to win the whole shebang. It was a fitting cap to a great bounce back season for me.
Last year was my first in the league, and I was bad.
It had been a long time since my travel team and high school baseball days, where I was a solid outfielder and contact hitter. I dropped routine balls in the outfield. I didn’t get a hit until the fourth game of the season. I cleaned up my act in the second half, but my team finished 3-7 and were eliminated from the playoffs.
This year was different. Before the season started up in February, I made it out to the batting cages a few times. I invested in a bat of my own and I made sure I was in better overall shape. The effort paid off. I ended the year batting over .500, and being one of the more solid defenders on the team.
Okay, Andrew, you might be thinking. But your Substack is about writing, right? What does softball have to do with writing?
A lot, in fact.
I look forward to playing in this softball league all year.
I look forward to the white lines on the field, the feel of dirt on my fingertips, the crisp grass, the warmup tosses, the sound of the bat when you make solid contact.
I look forward to playing with my teammates, who are mostly men in their early 30s to mid 60s. We have beer bellies, kids, mortgages and car payments. We’re of all races, ethnicities, and political orientation. Basically zero of them work in “creative” industries. They clean pools, build decks, sell real estate, and promote parties at clubs. But we all find it thrilling to live out our boyhood fantasies a dozen weekends out of the year.
Not that we play in anything close to the majors.
The league is the sort of league where players chug beers between innings and pull on cigarettes in the on-deck circle. The sort of league where, officially, profanity is not allowed, but also where our old school umpire, Jack, whose voice sounds like a car running over gravel, has yet to ever eject anyone for foul language.
Outside lives seldom come up while we’re playing. Out of all the guys I’ve played with thus far, and against, maybe two know that I’m a writer. My forthcoming novel has never come up in conversation, despite the fact that this season I’ve played while finishing up edits, choosing a cover, getting blurbs, and corresponding with booksellers.
Instead, when we see each other, we talk almost exclusively about sports. The Mets, the Yankees, and Marlins. The run that the Heat went on (RIP). The local college basketball teams that fared well in the NCAA tournament. Even hockey, which I don’t watch much of and know even less about.
We talk about the weight of bats, about brands of gloves and cleats. We talk about the pitcher on the mound and what we know about how they like to throw. We talk about the third baseman we should pull the ball to because they always make errors.
For that hour each week, I’m not Andrew, the writer. I’m not even Andrew, the dad. I’m Andrew, the outfielder, or infielder, depending on the day. Nothing about my book or my responsibilities run through my mind. I’m focused only on the next pitch, the next at bat, on getting the win.
During the days between games, I’m still often thinking about baseball, too.
I’m thinking about anything I messed up on in the previous game, I’m visualizing myself doing things differently. I’m following the Mets, watching the games, reading the analysis, reading about the prospects (when will I get to see Mauricio play!), listening to the podcasts.
Where does the writing come in? It doesn’t—except for the designated periods of the day I want it to. And that is the point. The softball league, and baseball in general, is a hobby for me, yes.
But more importantly it is a distraction. A useful one at that.
There was a period of time, from about age 25 to 28 or so, when baseball took a back seat in my life. I felt that it had to, because during this period, all I focused on was writing, and more detrimentally, the “writing world.”
In that world, it seemed to be the case that caring a lot about a sport like baseball and talking about it often was looked down upon as something simple. Something for the commoners, the people who listened to Joe Rogan and thought Marvel movies were good. Not for the people who digest the latest must-read piece in The New Yorker, who saw the latest foreign indie film, who knew precisely what the “discourse” was sub-tweeting about, and who could tell you all about the latest books that won literary prizes.
Instead of thinking about baseball, I thought about things like: Who got the fat book deal? Who has this many followers? Who got that big review or that award? Who wrote that piece that every one cannot stop talking about and why isn’t that person me?
It was during this period of time where I struggled the most with the writing of my novel. I was so focused on pleasing people and keeping up with the trends and reaching rungs of status I’d created in my head. As a result I could only churn out dry, boring writing that lacked energy and vitality.
I was worried about all these voices in my head, voices which, looking back, I was silly to think were ever concerned with me in the first place.
It was delusional. And yet, I still see many people and meet many people, particularly younger writers, who succumb to the delusion.
I’m not saying you should be ignorant of what is going on in the larger literary or media landscape. I’m also not saying it is bad to be friends with writers and to do the necessary work of sharing writing with each other and supporting each other.
But I am saying that being too steeped in all things literary and media, clocking the day to day movements too closely, concerning yourself with the fine details all the time, knowing all about the movers and shakers, isn’t all that useful.
At least it wasn’t for me.
Do you know what was useful? What actually changed my writing for the better?
Becoming a father, first and foremost. But also something achievable for more people: Finding a hobby.
A hobby that was a boyhood passion of mine, but that I’d discarded somewhere along the way because I thought I needed to be a serious literary person.
A hobby that has nothing to do with writing and puts me into contact with people who don’t spend the majority of their time online thinking about writing, writers, and writer gossip, but who in fact represent the vast majority of this country.
A hobby that gets me out of my head and forces me to focus on movement, on breath, and on making contact with a little ball.
A hobby that, even for an hour each week, makes me not give a damn about whatever it is I’m working on.
A hobby that reminds me that life isn’t all about publishing and recognition that is hard to attain and doled out for reasons I’ll never understand.
A hobby that reinforces the truth that, at the end of the day, all I can do is put the work in, write some stuff I like and that I’m proud of, try my best to get it out there, and let the chips fall where they may.
Peace,
Andrew
P.S. No recommendations from me this week, except to stay tuned here for some exciting news I’ll be sharing soon!
I strongly identify with this. Most of my close, closer, and closest friemdship revolve around basketball.