A year ago today, my adopted home city was still burning with wildfires that Dresden-ed about seven times the total acreage of my original home town in just a few days. Things were extremely scary. Go-bags were packed and we were all glued to the ‘Watch Duty’ app on our phones. But we got through it together. Slag Los Angeles all you want, but we’re a resilient and proud bunch of sun-drenched weirdos who come together when the sh#t gets real. LA Strong. Believe it.
[Millions of burnt embers – the remains of peoples’ homes – washed up on the beaches for weeks.]
When the smoke finally cleared (even if the beaches didn’t) it felt like the year hadn’t even started and we had all been knocked semi-senseless for a standing eight-count. I was luckier than a lot of people, including friends who yes, “lost everything” – their houses and everything in them. Adding to the sense of loss normal after this kind of tragedy/natural disaster, there was something else; the first inkling that we, as a people, couldn’t count on the kind of federal assistance that had always been normal and expected, you know, in ‘the before times.’
It got dark and I’ll admit my reflex was to retreat a bit from the world. I deleted social media accounts and I, surprisingly, got a lot of writing done, because the only places that felt safe, sane and normal were the fantasy worlds that have always spun around in my head. And when spring training finally rolled around I decided I needed to have a ‘Baseball Summer’ – my first in a long time. I was going to pay attention; check the daily box scores, catch the highlights on ESPN (even on weeknights), know the standings and even layer in some home team podcasts. I was looking for comfort and a feeling that only the soft, summer-long rhythms of baseball could give me.
…and baseball didn’t fail me. I locked in and was rewarded with drama, fun and hustle on every level.
The Cleveland Guardians, who I adopted for the season, had a rollercoaster year. Early expectations of a successful season were shattered by a soul-crushingly long losing streak that put them 15.5 games back at the All-Star break… but (just like in the movies) they came alive in the second half of the season and eventually surged to first place to take the AL Central title. It was glorious, and yeah, it felt like “we were all Cleveland.”
My beloved Boston Red Sox also managed to make it to the playoffs in spite of a season snakebit with injuries, bad hops and a front office that didn’t always seem 100% interested in winning. Yeah, I said it.
And finally, my 2nd ‘soul team’ Osaka’s Hanshin Tigers provided some sweet baseball heartbreak – after a ‘dream season’ that saw them shredding the competition in every aspect of the game, they sailed into the final ‘Japan Series’ confident, competent and ready… but lost to an inspired Hawks team, who gave their own fans an inspiring season finale to remember. Sometimes good stories have sad endings. Sometimes that’s what makes them good. Especially in baseball. Wait’ll next year. Go Tigers!
Just a few days ago, I realized I hadn’t posted anything here since that April post. Baseball and summer are both long over. (Heck, the NFL season is nearly over with the Super Bowl just a few weeks away.) So what was I doing between innings?
Like everyone else, I was (am) mostly just surviving the ever-escalating day-to-day chaos that is life in America now and wondering how (and how much longer) we’re going to be able to hold onto the things that used to seem, if not eternal, at least solidly expected to endure.
My year had the typical number of submissions & rejections, along with some new opportunities to voice characters for podcasts, which were fun. But the two real creative highlights of the year were both unexpected:
In July I was invited to a writer’s retreat in Co. Wicklow Ireland,. Even though it was painfully expensive (and gave me a dose of covid on the flight home,) it did rekindle some things that had been missing in my writing (and my soul): a little temporary lightness in my heart and hope in my pen. I was charmed by the kindness of the other writers and impressed with their talents. I spent a week watching the sun set at 10:30pm and rise at 4:30am, listening to the wind in the trees and trying to spot pine martens in the woods.
October found me in a real, honest-to-god “writer’s room” for the first time in much longer than I care to admit. I spent nine days, over the course of 2 weeks, in a room with a bunch of hilarious and generous people, working on a comedy project that appears to still be ‘moving forward,’ but still feels highly ‘jinx-able’ so I’m not going to say too much about it (yet,) but it was glorious. Even when one (or several) of my pitches died painful, writhing deaths in the silent room, it was a blast. Writing, even comedy writing, is a pretty lonely pursuit these days, so it was heaven to be in a roomful of good people, all of them (us) powered by the same strange compulsion: to make each other, and hopefully strangers we’ll never know, laugh. I know how corny that sounds but it’s true.
I’m grateful that most aspects of ‘real life’ went ok was well. My family (and cat) stayed healthy and tragedy-free. I made a point of getting better-connected with several friends, and I had a few moments of clarity and even bliss. Even in this worst-of-all-possible-timelines, there is always much to be grateful for, and I am. Every goddamn day.
And that brings us to the mental tsunami that already is 2026. There is only so much a person can hide from or tune-out and still be a responsible citizen and patriot. You can’t retreat completely into fiction & fantasyland and remain a dreamer when your beloved country has been hijacked by people determined to make life a nightmare for people who can’t fight back – and eventually for you too. Believe that.
I’ve written before about trying to keep these posts politics-free and focused on writing and creativity etc., but we’re past the point where silence equals complicity. As a not-as-young-as-I-used-to-be person, I’m still trying to figure out what I personally can do to help hold the line for democracy and basic human decency. How do I hold ground for all the people I love here in 2026, versus the way we did it (or at least tried to) in the 80s, 90s and 00s? I’ve already had more than my share of concussions from dudes with clubs and badges. But we all have to figure out how to show up and turn out – for our friends, for strangers, for democracy and decency …because if we don’t now, I have a feeling there won’t be m(any) more Baseball Summers for anyone.
