Why subscribe?
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Each week, I’ll send out a new post exploring a different baseball topic from between 1985 to 1994. Stats will be discussed, but they won’t be the focal point. I want to celebrate the stories and personalities that made baseball come alive when I cared about it most. I’ll try not to talk about the Kansas City Royals too much, but I make no promises. Follow me on Twitter @pbnostalgia for updates and occasional non-baseball takes.
About Me: The Long Version
Willie Wilson walked off the Yankees in the bottom of the 13th with an inside-the-park home run on the day I was born. Strangely enough, I suspect my mom took very little comfort in this fact during her labor pains. Six years later, I went to my first Royals game and then watched them win the World Series, cementing me as a baseball fan for the rest of my life, for better or worse.
I grew up in Atchison, Kansas (home of Amelia Earhart), about an hour north of Kansas City right on the Missouri River. By the time I was eighteen, I couldn’t wait to get out. I bounced around the country, making stops in Los Angeles and Chicago, before eventually finding my way back to KC.
Despite a lack of speed or power, I played all around the diamond in little league. I saved up my allowance to buy a pair of fancy Franklin batting gloves and experimented with dozens of batting stances. A streaky right-handed hitter, I only had the nerve switch hit once in an actual game. I walked.
I made several starts as a pitcher before I was emphatically pulled from the mound for good. Because I was one of the few kids who could actually read a fly ball off the bat AND catch it, I spent more and more time in the outfield the older I got.
Unfortunately, my high school didn’t have a baseball program, so my organized ball career ended the summer after eighth grade. That said, my favorite games were usually played with my cousins in my grandparents’ side yard. We called it Murray Field. Like old Tiger Stadium and other vintage summer cathedrals, it is no longer standing.
Athletic success did not always elude me however. In the mid-2000’s, I was a member of the three-time City Rec League Dodgeball champs in Lawrence, Kansas. A threepeat! So Michael Jordan and I have that in common. But baseball has always been my first love.
This manifests itself in a number of strange ways. I’ve spent far too much time in my life wondering how good Bo Jackson could have been if he’d never injured his hip. I firmly believe the world was a better place when TBS and WGN aired all the Braves and Cubs games. And I miss the Montreal Expos like a dead relative I took for granted. If only I’d spent more time with them when they were still around…
These quirks haven’t completely undermined all attempts to achieve a semblance of normalcy in my life.
I’m happily married to an intelligent, beautiful woman who doesn’t seem to mind my passion for baseball. Sure, she doesn’t have the first clue who Ken Griffey Jr. is, but she’s always up for going out to the ballpark, shares my appetite for funnel cake, and only occasionally complains that I watch too much baseball on TV. She’s a catch.
I have three sons, ranging from ages 6 to 15 at the time of this blog’s launch. Is it coincidence that the baseball card shop in Atchison when I was a kid was called My Three Sons? Of course it is, but that doesn’t make it any less true. My middle son, despite his skinniness, is already one hell of a catcher. Ironically, that’s the only position I never played.
My degree is in history, with an emphasis on the Middle Ages. This doesn’t qualify me to write about baseball, though the two subjects have a surprising amount in common. Both feature a lot of swinging blunt objects, high-velocity projectiles, class warfare, creative trash talk, and inspired fashion choices.
To date, I’ve published several short stories that have nothing to do with baseball. I’ve also written a novel I’m quite proud of. Perhaps, if I can find someone who would be proud enough to publish it, you might one day feel proud of yourself for reading it.
In the meantime, I am a mild-mannered children’s librarian by day, and an aspiring baseball writer by night. Powder Blue Nostalgia is my first venture into that realm. Like Joey Gallo, I fully expect to hit it out of the park or go down swinging.
Join the crew
The whole idea of this newsletter is to have some fun and talk about baseball. We’re not going to take ourselves too seriously. Naturally, the posts in the newsletter will be coming from my perspective, but I hope it inspires you to think about your own personal golden age of baseball, regardless of whether it syncs up with mine or not. Feel free to share your own takes and experiences.
