A Year

A Year

By Scott Bolohan

As I age, a year becomes increasingly arbitrary, the passing of time dreaded. But this last year was, if nothing else, certainly notable. And this issue marks the first anniversary of The Twin Bill.

But for us to make it a year is worth celebrating.

We not only launched The Twin Bill, but managed to publish a staggering twenty-eight essays, sixteen short stories, thirty-three poems, six visual artists, and interviewed authors, musicians, and All-Stars. We even got profiled in The Writer Magazine and I got to see it on newsstands. We’re still figuring things out. There are many ways to improve, and we have plans and hopes and dreams for how we can. But one of the most incredible things that happened was I began to look at baseball in a forever altered way. For example, for the rest of my life, whenever I see Lucas Giolito pitch, I’ll always think of Andy Lattimer’s comic.

But when I think back on the first year of The Twin Bill’s existence, I’ll always think of Annie.

Before we talk too much about Annie, we have to establish something. You often hear people say their dog is the best. However, they are wrong. There has never been a kinder, smarter, more loving dog than Annie. At one point over the summer, while throwing her the tennis ball, my mom commented that Annie was such a bringer of joy, which has stuck with me as something to strive for in life. It’s simply an indisputable fact that she is the best dog that ever existed.

My brother Mark (who has contributed some incredible illustrations) is allergic to dogs, so we never had one. I moved out of my parents’ house for the first time in 2005, off to Chicago, then what I thought was permanently in 2010, off to New York City. During the pandemic, my girlfriend and I ended up moving back into my parents’ house in Michigan in July, and with Mark not coming to the house for the foreseeable future, we pushed my parents to get a dog. We met with a rescue dog whose owners were going to put her down since they could no longer take care of her. She was nine years old, a little bit overweight, with bad allergies, and a bit of a limp. We fell in love with her immediately.

My mom had always said I would have been named Anne if I was a girl because of Anne of Green Gables, so we finally put the name to use. The day we brought her home and put her Tigers collar on her, it was also the home opener for the Tigers in what would end up being probably the strangest year in baseball history, made no less strange for us by the sudden appearance of a dog in our house.

The pandemic days, which had seemed both endless and fast in a way that we’ll hopefully always struggle to explain to future generations, became structured around Annie. A walk in the morning, afternoon, and evening, with a little bit of playing fetch in the front yard. And in between, I ended up spending more time on the floor than I have in my entire life combined, as I learned that Annie would snuggle up and rest her head on my arm while she licked my face. I would wake up and know that no matter what happened in the world that day, it was going to be a good day because I got to see Annie and I knew I would have a reason to smile, to laugh.

Seemingly everything I did in the last year involved Annie. I remember sitting in the room that has been converted into my pandemic office, waiting to interview Darryl Strawberry. I thought this was our big break, a bit of legitimacy for us. But if there was one thing about Annie, she could not be counted on to be quiet. Her bark, for a small, sweet dog, could be heard down the street. So I made sure she was out on a walk for however long I was going to be chatting with Darryl. We would repeat this process for every interview, although, honestly, I don’t see how they wouldn’t have gone better if she came bounding in on Zoom.

For our first issue, I wrote about going down to watch the Tigers through the fence at Comerica Park with my family. We took Annie too. She was as happy as can be, her first time presumably anywhere near a ballpark. Baseball, already firmly inseparable from me as a person, would soon become intertwined with Annie. She sat every night on the couch between my mom and I as we watched Tigers. When I had my Tommy John surgery in February, she would still come to lick my face, careful to avoid the large brace on my arm.

In the spring, I was hired to be the pitching coach at the high school I went to. My mom took Annie to every game, often sitting behind the leftfield fence by her favorite player, Jordan, who she liked because he was so positive and always seemed like he was having fun. When the ball came near Jordan, Annie would get excited and would have liked nothing more than to run out on the field to grab it. In between doubleheaders, I would stop to see Annie and she would jump on me and lick my face, whether we won or lost. In the summer, I umpired in the league I grew up playing in, and Annie would come to watch too. The parents were noticeably nicer to me after they saw me step behind the backstop playing with Annie for a moment. Sometimes I would hear her bark while I was behind the plate and laugh to myself.

On September 9, I was playing catch with my dad in the front yard, building up my throwing strength after Tommy John. Annie watched out the front window and began barking and didn’t stop until we brought her out to play ball too. It would be the last time I ever played ball with her.

The next day, Annie threw up blood and was lethargic. We took her to the vet, and they thought she had a virus. But I knew something wasn’t right when she wasn’t running to the fridge every time it opened or following us around. That day, I sat with her on the couch editing essays for The Twin Bill, she curled up with her head on my lap, unwilling to move even for her beloved green beans.

She died the next day and we buried her in the backyard. We had tickets to take her to Bark in the Park at Comerica Park a week later. We had her for just over a year.

It wasn’t just a family member dying, she was the central thing in our pandemic life that was suddenly an inescapable void. I still struggle to believe she’s really gone, that something so full of life and happiness could just somehow stop so suddenly. When we weren’t crying, we were in a haze. We still put the Tigers on, although I couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened in any of those games. Sometimes, that’s the beauty of baseball. It keeps going, even when you don’t want to. September Tigers baseball was better than the silence around the house and the emptiness of the places where she should be.

The pain was a reflection of the amount of joy and love we lost. But we began to realize it doesn’t really disappear and that we were so lucky to have had her, even though we were unprepared to let her go. My mom and I used to sit on the floor in her room until Annie went to sleep, a tradition we kept up without her. Slowly, we were able to look at photos and videos of her and remember the good times instead of just the end. We even laughed sometimes.

I’ve tried to think of grand statements to make about how in just a year, you can find yourself loving something so completely and doing things you never could have imagined, despite the chaos all around you. But maybe that’s just it. You are always capable of more love, and it’s getting it out there in the world is what matters. In many ways, that’s what The Twin Bill is for me. I don’t have any illusions we’re saving the world, but perhaps we are able to spread joy about a game that has never simply been a game to me.

I have no idea what the next year will look like, for myself or The Twin Bill. But I have hope.

Scott Bolohan is the founder of The Twin Bill.