The Strike

Taking time to reflect and look ahead.

Spoiler alert: the signs did not work.

I knew when I set the endpoint of the era I wanted to cover in PBN as the 1994 Strike, I would someday have to write about it. I just didn’t know what I wanted to say about it. I would have loved for the era to end on a more positive note, and even considered using the Braves finishing off a decade that began with futility and concluded with a World Series title in 1995 instead, but that never felt quite right. Let’s face it. While this newsletter has featured some of the most upbeat writing I’ve ever done, I’ve never been a happy ending kind of guy.

More importantly, the Strike in 1994 marked the true end of my obsession with baseball. No, it wasn’t because I was angry. I mean, I was angry. As sympathetic as I might be to some of their aims (especially on the players’ side), I still can’t believe they allowed the World Series to be canceled. I mean, that’s like canceling Christmas. Or perhaps more accurately, canceling summer itself.

But if I’m being honest, the disruption of baseball was pretty far down the list of things I was angry about in 1994. I was fifteen and upset about lots of things. And excited about a lot of things too. Baseball had been gradually losing ground on my list of priorities for some time, and the Strike simply accelerated its decline.

I was more interested in girls, even if I was too shy and nervous to get anywhere with most of them. I wanted to write the Great American Novel and become a successful author— still a work in progress thirty years later, though, to be fair, I’ve taken a few detours over the years. Fifteen-year-old me cared more about smoking pot, going to concerts, reading everything I could get my hands on, and perhaps most importantly, getting the hell out of my hometown. I’ve had mixed results on that last one.

Baseball drifted further and further away on my radar. It never fell off completely, but it’s spent a lot of time on the fringe. Don’t get me wrong. I still love the game. It’s still a great way to kill around three hours in a day, and certainly healthier than some of the other habits I’ve used to distract myself. But it’s never the same as when you were a kid.

Still, if you love the game, you try to find ways to rekindle that magic, if only temporarily or even vicariously. The best method for doing so is simply getting out to the park and taking in a game. Or maybe you start writing a nostalgic newsletter. (It’s certainly worked for me.) I can see that magic reflected in my kids’ eyes when we go to a game, and it’s good to know that it’s still there, even if I no longer get quite the full effect.

Even as I relegated baseball to the margins of my life, it continually found a way to make its presence felt. The Strike was just a blip, which is why I don’t feel the need to get into the details of it here. I’d rather talk about some of the moments that have captured my attention in the years since.

I’ve made no secret in this newsletter that I’m a Royals fan. Their run to a championship in 1985, the year I started watching baseball and attended my first game, locked me in as a fan from the start. But the Strike helped kill whatever momentum they had going in the early nineties, and nearly thirty years of bad baseball in Kanas City took its toll. The beginning of their resurgence in 2013, followed by back-to-back World Series runs in 2014-15, reignited my passion. Baseball has always held a revered spot in my heart, but I doubt I would have written any of these articles if that run had not occurred. It’s the closest I’ve come to recapturing that childhood magic in my adult life.

Not only that, but I give baseball partial credit for saving my life. At the very least, it helped turn my life around. I won’t go into great detail, but I went through a rough period that stretched from my late twenties into my thirties. I hit my lowest point about the same time as the Royals were turning it around. No, I did not draw inspiration from them directly. But as I attempted to fix my life and separate myself from certain problematic elements, I rediscovered my youthful enthusiasm for the game. I leaned into it to fill the down time and occupy my mind, and it worked.

That is why I remind myself not to get too frustrated whenever an obnoxious troll gets under my skin in a baseball social media group. I try not to get bent out of shape debating the merits of WAR. And if I sometimes feel like writing about baseball lacks substance, or that I’m spending too much time copying stats from one document to another and recording the exploits of a random player who might be kind of a douchebag, I tell myself to knock it off. Because baseball is meaningful, and it is powerful. You don’t even have to play it to feel it. You just have to open yourself up to it, and it will change your life. I’m living proof of that.

And there have been plenty of great moments on the field in the years since my honeymoon phase with baseball ended. Nor do they all revolve around the Royals for me either. As an adult, I have not followed the wider sport as closely as I did in my youth, but I haven’t ignored it either. I briefly touched on it at the beginning of this piece, but the Braves winning the 1995 World Series always felt like a milestone to me. If you’ve only known the Braves as the powerhouse they’ve been since 1991, you won’t understand. But if you were watching TBS in the mid-80’s, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The home run chase of 1998, featuring Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, was amazing in the moment. It’s often been credited with saving baseball and drawing fans back after the Strike, even if it’s become tainted in hindsight by what we now know about rampant PED use. At the time, however, none of us knew or cared enough to make much of a fuss. For my part, I’ve always been a Big Mac fan. One of the first articles I wrote for this newsletter was about him, and while I acknowledge the controversy surrounding his accomplishments, I’d be lying if I said it had done much to diminish my memories of watching him play.

Then there was the Red Sox coming back from being down 3-0 to the rival Yankees in the 2004 ALCS— the first and only time that’s ever been done in MLB history. Finally breaking the Curse of the Bambino was one of those moments I didn’t know if I would ever see. After all, generations of Boston fans lived and died with it hanging over their heads. And to do it in such an epic fashion only made it more surreal. I’ve become less enamored with the Red Sox with each championship they’ve won since, but it was almost impossible not to root for that team.

The same goes for the 2016 Chicago Cubs, but then again, at least for me, the Cubs have always been easy to root for. Way more likeable than the Cardinals, for example, but even I was wowed by David Freese’s heroics in St. Louis’ comeback against Texas in the 2011 World Series. Now, we just have to figure out a way to get Cleveland a title. And maybe the Brewers too, while we’re at it. I’m a sucker for small-market teams, especially when they’ve got history and are long overdue.

However, just mentioning the term small-market reminds there are still plenty of problems with the game. We had another work stoppage wipe out most of Spring Training and a week of the season in 2022, and the economics of the game are a total mess. Interleague play was a cool novelty when it began, but now that it’s become the norm, we’ve lost any meaningful separation between the American and National Leagues. That’s not necessarily a problem, but for those of us old enough to remember how it used to be, it does feel like we’ve lost something. Nothing stays the same forever though.

Natural evolutionary changes distance us from the game we loved as kids, but I’d encourage all baseball fans not to get so caught up in the past that they’re unwilling to at least give the future a chance. Perhaps that sounds strange coming from a baseball history writer, but the celebration of the past by itself is an empty gesture. The story of baseball’s history is meaningless if it does not enrich the present. And for its part, the modern game must strive to be worthy of being the next chapter.

That doesn’t mean it has to be perfect, which is good, because it’s not even close. But I believe baseball still has a lot to offer. I watched this past season through the eyes of both a fortysomething-year-old man and the little kid whose memories have fueled this newsletter, and I feel better about baseball’s future than I have in a long time.

Sure, it still has a lot of work to do to keep pace (or better yet, gain ground) on the NFL and the NBA, and maybe even the NHL and rapidly rising MLS, but the introduction of the pitch clock and renewed emphasis on the running game have made baseball feel closer to the game of my youth than it has in decades, no matter what the cranky curmudgeons say. They’re proof that even Commissioner Rob Manfred can do something right occasionally. Not exactly the best vote of confidence I’ve ever heard, but it’s the best Manfred is going to get from me.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from taking a deep dive into baseball over the last year, it’s that the only thing all baseball fans can agree on is that Manfred sucks. I’ve connected with so many of them through writing and promoting this newsletter, and while we haven’t seen eye-to-eye on everything, and have even occasionally clashed, that has been the most rewarding part of this experience. I didn’t know what to expect when I launched Powder Blue Nostalgia. Part of me suspected I would be screaming into the void for a few months before I finally decided it wasn’t worth it and gave up. But that hasn’t been the case.

The greatest baseball moment of my adult life. Technically, Hosmer only tied Game 5 with his mad dash, but this was when I knew the Royals were going to win the World Series. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire/Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Subscription numbers have never exploded like I dreamed, but hundreds of people read each post. Ten thousand read my recent article about busts. Thousands of people have found their way to PBN and read at least some of the articles, and I’ve had the pleasure of talking baseball with many of you. I’ve published short fiction in several literary journals, but I suspect far more people have read my musings on baseball than anything else I’ve ever written. That’s extremely gratifying.

And there have been other perks as well. Earlier this year, I got to meet Willie Wilson, one of my favorite players of all time and the subject of Powder Blue Nostalgia’s second article ever, and I was able to show him the newsletter when he signed the ball I wrote about from my first game in 1985. Mark Gubicza read the article I wrote about him (and my late mother’s crush) and talked about it with me on Twitter. And two months ago, Kings of Kauffman offered me my first paid gig to come aboard and write about the Royals.

I didn’t know if this project would be worth my time when I started it a little over a year ago, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to shake it until I got it out of my system. Over the last twelve months, I’ve had several moments when my enthusiasm and resolve has faltered, but I’ve managed to tap into them again. And I’m so glad I have.

That said, I’ve been running full-bore on this project for a year-and-a-half now, if you count the time it took to get it off the ground before I officially launched it in December 2022. I’ve published over fifty articles, one every Wednesday morning, without missing a single week, and if you’ve made it this far with me, you know that my work is not known for its brevity. True, I made an effort to cut down on my word count considerably starting in late August, but I’m still not sure I’ve ever qualified as a quick read. Throw in the time spent researching every subject before I even sit down to write, and you start to see how time-consuming Powder Blue Nostalgia can be.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not comparing it to working in a coal mine. It’s not hard labor, and I really do enjoy the work. But this feels like the right time to take a break. We’ve passed the one-year mark on this journey, and we’re in the middle of the offseason, still at least a month away from pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training. I don’t think we’ll get a better opening to recharge our batteries.

I have other, non-baseball projects I want to work on, but I know full well the baseball itch isn’t going away. Nor would I want it to. Like I said earlier, baseball matters, and I know it definitely matters to me. So let’s think of this like a rain delay. Feel free to watch an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show or This Week in Baseball if that helps put you in the right mindset.

I’m looking at some time in Spring Training or Opening Day, at the latest, as the ideal time to begin year two of Powder Blue Nostalgia. And I’ve even got some ideas on how to tweak the formula to keep things fresh and hopefully help the newsletter grow.

Until then, I want to sincerely thank you for coming this far with me. I’ve loved talking baseball and sharing my memories with you. Stay subscribed and you won’t miss it when I come back. Feel free to hit me up here or on social media if you want to talk old school baseball in the meantime. And if you’re a Royals fan, or simply can’t go without any baseball takes from me, I invite you to check out my work at Kings of Kauffman. None of us have to go completely cold turkey.

In the meantime, bring out the tarp!

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Thank you once again for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. Connecting with you all over the great game of baseball has been one of the highlights of my writing career. Stay subscribed and we’ll reconnect in Arizona or Florida or wherever we find ourselves this Spring.