Leading Off

Leading Off

By Scott Bolohan

At the start of the pandemic, I got Covid-19. For two weeks, I sat on the couch and watched the entirety of Ken Burns’ Baseball. It gave me comfort in a time when everything was stressful. I wanted to write about it, but for a sport that is steeped in literary connotations, I couldn’t find anywhere I could. As sports sections shrink, places where you can write about baseball beyond just what happened in a game are hard to find. Sports have an incredible way of transcending our differences. Back in the olden days, you could go to a ballpark and sit among tens of thousands of people, all from different backgrounds, sharing a collective moment. And everyone at that game had a unique experience.

So I decided to create The Twin Bill. It wasn’t my first or sixth choice for the name, but it was available. I had no way of knowing that in 2020 there would be more twin bills played than in decades. It’s oddly become fitting for the baseball publication (sounds classier than ‘site’) during a pandemic where pretty much nothing has been a happy coincidence.

But that’s been about it. Everything else has been strange. As I’m writing, the St. Louis Cardinals have played eight games halfway through August. Right now—and who knows what will be happening next week—the government is trying to make the postal service fail, which is somewhat personal for me. Both of my parents were mail carriers when they were in college, but the postal service is also responsible for my first writings about baseball.

Somehow, I figured out I could write letters to baseball players and they would send back autographs.

Getting the mail became one of the best things in the world. I remember the groan of the mail truck’s engine, starting and stopping at each house. I would sit at the front window and watch until the truck drove away, so I didn’t look like a crazy person waiting for the mail, and sprinted down the driveway to the mailbox without bothering to put on shoes.

Most days, it would just be mail for my parents, but every now and then, I saw my handwriting in pencil on an envelope addressed to myself. I knew inside was an autograph from a baseball player.

Usually the players sent back a signed card. The joy wasn’t because of the value of the autographs, it was from the idea that a baseball player read my letter and signed something for me and sent it back to my house, a human touch to players that I thought of as closer to gods than people.

I wrote to guys I didn’t already have an autograph from during batting practice, so it would mostly be pitchers and players who just joined the team. I wrote to the majority of the 1995 and 1996 Detroit Tigers, teams which won a combined 113 games over two years, not the most collectible teams. Players like Kevin Wickander and Matt Christopher are probably not remembered by even the biggest baseball fans, but I’ll always remember them because of their kindness.

Sometimes I was surprised by what was sent back to me. C.J. Nitkowski sent me a hand-drawn baseball design with multiple autographed cards. It looked like he cut a hat out of a magazine and pasted it on it. Melvin Nieves sent me eight autographed cards. Eddie Williams sent me back my letter I wrote. I drew a picture of him on it, mostly because I thought the letter looked too short. He signed the drawing.

I began to be pickier about who I wrote to and branched out to players from other teams, actual stars, some who I would never get to see come to Tiger Stadium. Nolan Ryan. Greg Maddux. Chipper Jones. Years after I wrote to him, Brady Anderson sent me back an autograph. Now, back in the house I grew up in during the pandemic, I took it down off my wall and looked at the back for the first time in decades, which contained fun facts about Brady. Under ‘Favorite Book’ it was printed “Ayn Rand” but crossed out by hand and changed to “Catch-22 Joseph Heller.” First, just allow yourself the amazing image of Brady Anderson in a heated debate over Ayn Rand with B.J. Surhoff and Mike Mussina. But then what happened to make him change? Was he a big proponent of Objectivism until he picked up Catch-22 and had some kind of epiphany? Did the Clinton scandal make him change his mind? Whatever it was, he really wanted everyone to know his change of heart. As a kid, it was completely over my head. I just remember at the age of nine asking my barber if she could give me Brady Anderson sideburns and thinking I should write to him.

David Wells was my favorite pitcher as a kid. He sent me back a black and white photo with his signature in blue ink. Something about it always looked off to me, the signature too clean. I always assumed it was preprinted. Since I knew I was going to be writing this, I decided to ask him. In a bit of 21st-century wizardry, I tweeted David Wells to find out if it was real. Within a half-hour, he responded. It was real.

While it was fun interacting with Wells, a certain something is missing, that tangible feeling of holding something, a connection. That’s always been the joy of the mail.

Those letters made me excited about writing. It made me excited about baseball. There’s a direct connection between writing to baseball players and creating The Twin Bill. I know so many fans have little stories like this that mean so much to them. Now there’s a place for them.

So welcome to The Twin Bill. Submissions are open now until September 30. We’ll publish at the start of the World Series. I hope you’ll tell your story.

Scott Bolohan is the founder of The Twin Bill. You can follow The Twin Bill on Twitter and Instagram.