DL366: Will Leitch Talks Fathers, Sons, Baseball & Are We Winning

Posted by Dan Levy | May 6th, 2010 Filed in Podcast
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Will Leitch has a new book out. It’s about growing up, and our relationships with our fathers, through the game of baseball. You should buy it. Seriously. Go buy it.

Still not convinced? Read an excerpt from the book on Deadspin where he (adeptly) tries to humanize Steve Bartman. Leitch thinks that Bartman is him…or any of us who love baseball.

STILL not convinced? Here is . And another.

Oh, right, or you could just listen to this conversation about the book, where we discuss the following topics (note: a transcription of some of this interview is featured on .)

• The marketing model of promoting a book now that he’s not Will Leitch, basement dweller and has become Will Leitch, BFD.

• The niche-specific nature of a baseball book, and if he feels the book is more a story of his life that uses the game as a conduit, or if it’s a book about baseball and he uses his personal experiences as the narrative to tell the story of the game? Or is it both…can it be both?

• The fact that Leitch hates stories about your kids and how great you think they are.

• I challenge the notion that he’s actually never told his dad that he loves him. Damn Midwest sensibilities.

• I ask why he wrote the book now — right before he’s about to get married and presumably start a family. Does he fear that he’ll look back on the book in 10 years and with he had waited until he was a father? He provides a wonderful answer to this question, by the way. And yes, I do use Mike Lupica as an example.

• We talk a bit about the goings on in the game right now, starting with the passing of Ernie Harwell and how Leitch’s first thought was to Jack Buck, as mine was to Harry Kalas.

• Will there be anyone like those guys ever again? And Leitch discusses the balance of having too many voices in the world of sports being a good thing (namely, we have jobs) and a bad thing (we lose the potential for a singular voice of a team).

• At some point we talk about Stan Musial’s VORP and juxtapose that with Doyle Brunson bringing a gun to backroom card games. What stories will we pass along to the next generation of baseball fan?

Thanks to Will for taking the time in a very busy week. Thanks to you for listening. Again, look for some of this over at TSB this afternoon.

Tags: , Book, Will Leitch

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