The Bookmobile: An Excerpt From "Are We Winning?"

by Will Leitch

Will Leitch’s Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball is out today. The book is one of those rare blends that conveys both the excitement of sports fandom and the importance of family. While there is certainly plenty for even the casual baseball observer to enjoy, Are We Winning? is at its strongest when it examines the bonds between fathers and sons, the rituals and shared experiences that make up our personal histories. (It is pretty much a slam-dunk Father’s Day gift, should you need one of those.) If you can put up with Leitch’s shameless St. Louis Cardinals boosterism, you will find yourself unexpectedly moved. Here’s a taste.

After every Cardinals game, I call my father. I’m in New York, he’s in Mattoon, Illinois. I’m living a dramatically different life from him, having wildly divergent experiences, not better, not worse, just different. I’m still years away from a child of my own. When he was 34, my age, I was eight. We have a picture of Dad, and the whole family, from that very year. Our insurance agent was a friends with then-Cardinals-general-manager Dal Maxvill, and the agent had secured us dugout passes before the game. We met Whitey Herzog, and Ozzie Smith, and Darrell Porter. But for whatever reason, we only secured photographs with two players: Lefthanded reliever Ken Dayley and fourth outfielder Tito Landrum.

The photos are still on our wall at home, right next to the bar with the liquor bottles filled with water to make them look real. I’m carrying a scorebook and have a pencil in my ear, my socks pulled up to my knees, wearing a T-shirt that reads “I Root For Two Teams: The Cardinals And Whoever Plays The Cubs.” My sister is wearing oversized sunglasses and a big toothless smile. My mom has a camera around her neck and large bangs. And there’s my dad, young, fit-fitter than I am today, at 34-with a tank top, short black hair, and a mustache. He’s staring into the sun, wincing, waiting for whoever to just take the picture already. The kids are surely antsy. Jill probably needs to use the bathroom, and the Astroturf field holds the heat like a catcher’s mitt. Pete Rose, playing for the Montreal Expos, is shagging balls at first base, and he’s my favorite player not on the Cardinals. I want to watch him. Dad’s just trying to keep everybody together. The Cardinals do that. But only for a short while. Eventually, everyone will scatter.

Ken Dayley is one picture, and Tito Landrum is in the other. Dayley is only 25 years old and has just started his Cardinals career. He’ll play in St. Louis for six more seasons, then head to Toronto for two before retiring at the age of 34. Landrum began his career with the Cardinals, was traded in August of the season before to the Baltimore Orioles, where he won a World Series, and then was traded back to the Cardinals that March. He plays two-and-a-half more seasons with the Cardinals, then rattles around Los Angeles and Baltimore before retiring. He’s also 34 when he hangs up the spikes.

It is a tiny snapshot of one tiny moment, the Leitches as close to their family obsession as they will ever be, actually on the field at Busch Stadium. And dad looks like he’s about ready to run out the door. He looks happy. We all look happy. But there are more adventures out there, and besides, it’s really hot and look there’s Pete Rose.

I call Dad after every Cardinals game. We bitch and we moan and we cheer and we make plans to get together, every season, one weekend at the new Busch, just the two of us, drinking and watching baseball, our Cardinals, in quiet. It’s my favorite weekend of the year, and I suspect it’s his. I don’t know for sure. I wouldn’t dare ask.

But it can only be that one weekend out of the year. I have business in New York, and he has his home in Mattoon, and the phone calls can only do so much. The Cardinals are our one constant, and our one tether. But the rest of the world is chaos, and it is much bigger. Eventually there will be a family of my own, and we will start our own traditions, our own constants. I’ll still be in New York. He’ll still be in Mattoon. And time will keep going.

Then he will grow old, and then he will die. I can’t talk about it.

Are We Winning? is available now! Will Leitch is a contributing editor at New York Magazine and the founding editor of Deadspin. You can follow him on Twitter here.