What I Learned From Francisco Lindor About Writing

Back in July, my beloved New York Mets were in town playing the Miami Marlins. I went to two games. 

The first one was for me to watch and enjoy with my wife (we left the kids with the grandparents). I took my kids to the second one. I knew, from past experience, that if I was lucky I would get through four or five innings. But watching an entire ball game is no longer my goal when I take my kids to one.

The goal is to continue my ongoing efforts to indoctrinate them into becoming Mets fans, or, at the very least, bear baseball games enough that I can continue to count them as family outings. 

The second game started at 1:45 p.m. that Sunday, but we showed up at 1 p.m. because I had the start time mixed up. 

I was pissed as we sat there in the empty stands because I knew that by arriving so early we would burn through roughly 80 percent of the time allotted to us before our kids—ages two and four—can withstand being out in public or sitting stationary in one place before going insane. 

I watched the grounds crew attend to the grass, rake the bright dirt on the infield, and paint the crisp white chalk of the foul lines. Aside from the starting pitchers long-tossing with catchers in the outfield, there weren’t any other players on the field.  

Then Francisco Lindor emerged from the dugout. 

If you are not a baseball fan, and more specifically, a fan of the New York Mets, then I owe you this brief breakdown: Francisco Lindor is the star shortstop for the Mets who was traded here in 2021 and signed a $300-million deal to keep him in Queens for the next decade. Almost as soon as he put ink to paper, haters have complained that he’s overpaid. 

When he entered this season, his third in New York, he’d somewhat quieted the criticism by putting up a solid year last season. But the noise started right back up when Lindor struggled through the worst slump of his career for the first three months of this season. During that stretch, he was one of the team’s least effective hitters. The team lost so badly that they seemed destined for last place.  

Because Lindor is the team’s highest-paid player and the de facto leader, every night he was cornered by reporters and asked the same question: Why do you and the rest of the team suck so bad?

He never once got angry.

Each night Lindor did his best to answer in a positive manner, highlighting how hard he and the team were working, and how much they wanted to win. It was admirable to watch, and, despite his terrible start to the season, made me respect the man. 

Here was someone who was willing to stand-up and take some shit on the chin, which, I think, is something worth honoring in a day and age where hating and clap-backs are all the rage amongst athletes and the general populace. 

Sitting in the stands in July, however, my respect for Lindor, and admiration of his character, increased exponentially when I watched what he did after emerging from the dugout in Miami. 

While the rest of the players were inside of the clubhouse, Lindor put himself through a series of intense stretches, sprinting drills, parachute running, and warm up throws from various angles and distances. Each movement seemed deliberate, explosive. He wasn’t simply going through the motions. The entire routine went on for a good 30 minutes.

Then, about 10 minutes or so before game time, after Lindor was sweating, the rest of the players from both teams emerged. They played some catch, did a few sprints and stretches, but nothing as involved as Lindor. 

You should know that by this point in July, Lindor was no longer that struggling player I mentioned he’d been earlier in the season. He was red hot. He led the team in most hitting categories, was fielding like a wizard, and had firmly re-established himself as one of the players in the league. 

Most fans and casual observers at the game that day, who were now filling in the seats, had already forgotten just how bad he’d previously been. 

But I hadn’t.

Which is why watching him go through his intensive warmup routine made such an impact on me. It made it clear to me just why he’d had such a dramatic turnaround.

I realized that even through all of his down periods earlier in the season, and the resistance he faced, Lindor was the kind of guy who likely went through this warm up routine each and every game, the kind of guy who, like he said in his responses to reporters each night, put hard work in consistently to improve and play at an elite level—even when the work wasn’t clearly paying off to others. 

And, eventually, that work did pay off. 

Because I’m a writer and I’m always thinking about writing, the lesson I drew from this tied itself immediately to my craft. It helped that as I sat there in the stands trying to keep my kids from running away, I was also thinking in the back of my mind about how to find my way through a particularly rough patch of drafting my latest novel. 

There had been some periods of intense wandering, which, of course, is custom. Mornings and late nights where I stared at the screen, sleepy, and thought: Why do I even bother? Is this even worth it?

I was getting down words. Lots of them. But what was hard was that the words I was getting down, or forcing myself to get down sometimes, clearly didn’t feel like the right ones. The output was not what I was expecting. 

I felt like what I had witnessed on the ball field in front of me, that afternoon at the ball game, was a message from God, or perhaps the writing Gods. It said: Stay the course. Keep putting in the consistent work, keep showing up, keep trusting in the process. 

Is Francisco Lindor a talented ballplayer? Without a doubt. But that afternoon at the stadium, I learned that he’s also someone who puts in consistent effort behind the scenes when the cameras aren’t on and nobody is watching. 

And it is that consistency that helps him push through the slumps and get to the breakthroughs, just like it is my consistency that had previously done the same on the page, during the 10-years it took to finish my first novel.

Eventually, not long after that game with my family, things started clicking again in my draft. I found myself stumbling on an interesting idea, or turn of phrase, or some inkling—I can’t remember specifics now, to be honest. But the important thing is that I was all of a sudden moving in an interesting direction once more. I was getting to the page each day knowing, at least, the next step or two ahead—which is about the best that you can ask for.

Things are still moving like that at the moment, thankfully. But I’m sure I’ll hit some further bumps. Probably another slump. We all do, and we all will.

And when I do, I’ll think of Francisco Lindor and his warm-up routine. I’ll think of his consistency in the face of struggle and success.

Perhaps, thinking of him will help you, too. 

Peace, 

Andrew