THE ART OF CATCHING FEELINGS is here!!!

i can't call my own book a home run but i CAN call it a 2RBI triple!!!!

She was having a great time.

That’s one of my favorite lines in The Art of Catching Feelings — not because it shows off my prowess as a writer or anything, it could not BE any more simple of a line, but because in context it summarizes so much of what this book was about for me. You’ll know when you get to it ;)

Writing a book is always hard, which is one reason I like to refer to this one as a 2RBI triple as opposed to a home run . . . I’m too painfully aware of hubris to bat flip on my own book, but I DID dig deep¹ and I like to think I got two people to score.

I also — for the most part, usual agita and stress and crying aside — had a BLAST writing this book. I had a great time! I got to pour into it everything I love about baseball. So for my release day newsletter, I thought I would tell you five things I love about baseball, and how those specifically informed this book:

1. Baseball is weird.

If there’s one thing I wish I could adequately explain to people sometimes, it is that baseball is a deeply weird sport. Outfielders getting bored and making sandcastles in the outfield WHILE THE GAME IS GOING ON. Players forgetting how many outs there are, slipping and doing somersaults on routine plays, taunting the pitcher, talking back to the umpire, pulling pranks in the dugout. The snack game! The accessory game! They are unparalleled in this sport. It’s just quirky and funny and interesting and I love it so much.

In The Art of Catching Feelings, for example, YES I totally pushed the fictional envelope a bit with the conceit that a major league team would ever take a heckler and just . . . make her the team’s new sideline reporter. But I’d argue that I’m not pushing the envelope by much! Earlier this year, for example, a beekeeper was called in to take care of a swarm of bees that was behind home plate at a Diamondbacks-Dodgers game, and he got to throw out the first pitch and got his own official baseball card. This is the kind of shit baseball does!

2. Baseball is petty.

Maybe it’s because they play 162 games a year, so they have a LOT of time to form and hold grudges but . . . baseball can be hella petty. Players on opposing teams, players on the same team, managers, announcers, umpires, if you really follow it all the drama can be pretty delicious.

I also delighted in getting a little petty in The Art of Catching Feelings in several ways, some of which I may have already told you about and some of which I’ll tell you about in the future. (I always feel like I have to make a blanket apology in this newsletter for repeating myself; I don’t remember what I’ve said where sometimes!) For example, Pardon the Interruption host and overall troll Tony Kornheiser once said that he just didn’t find the Rays “interesting” or “charismatic” compared to “national” teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox (the kind of eRAYSure™ that just gets perpetuated by the national media that ignores small market teams but don’t get me started!!!). So of course when I had to come up with a comment that Daphne’s dickhead ex said to her, I referenced those comments. Do you hear what an asshole you sound like, Tony?

I also included some nods to the kind of YouTube content that gets made about baseball, which is honestly extremely funny and brings the sport to life in a way you might enjoy even if you’re not a huge fan. One of my favorite videos, for example, that we still reference constantly in our house (“I trust Randy and his ability” — no, you doooooon’t):

3. Baseball is nerdy.

There’s so much to know about baseball, so many ticky tacky rules and statistics and records. One way that I built up Chris’ relationship with his late brother Tim was the way they bonded so much over the sport, the way that Tim was the kind of guy who ALWAYS knew the record of every team in the division even as a kid, the way Chris looked up to him for that. There’s this part where Daphne marvels at how much INFORMATION baseball players seem to keep in their heads about match-ups and past at-bats and big plays, and that’s directly out of my own thoughts because it’s something that always blows my mind about baseball a bit.

I am far from the biggest nerd about baseball, but I do enjoy when I feel like I can hold my own in a conversation that gets down in the weeds about it. And I did build a nerdy little game right into the book, which I KNOW I’ve told you about before — basically, I name every single MLB team in the book except one, which is the team the Battery replaces in my fictional universe. (No offense was meant to this particular team, I had Other Reasons for choosing it which I can’t tell you or I’ll give it away!) The rules for crossing teams off the list are basically:

• If I mention the team by name, cross it off.

• If I mention the team’s city, cross it off. (This means that mentioning “Chicago” counts for both the Cubs and the White Sox, for example.)

• If I mention a current or iconic past player from that team, cross it off.

And if you don’t rely on “mentally list all 30 teams in the MLB by division” as a distraction/meditation when you’re at the dentist like I do, you can brush up on this knowledge or quiz yourself at any time here. When I need a little self-esteem boost I either take this quiz; take an online typing test; or watch videos where vocal coaches praise Hayley Williams’ singing technique. If you happen to come to any of my events PLEASE feel free to ask me to name all teams by division as a party trick; everyone else will be so annoyed but I will be preening².

4. Baseball is human.

They say to err is human and baseball literally counts how many errors you make in a game so there you have it. I love my local broadcasters Dewayne and BA, and recently Dewayne said something that really stayed with me because it just felt so true, not only about baseball but about life in general. I’m paraphrasing, but basically he was just talking about how if you’re hitting 2 for 10 you’re at .200 (not a great batting average) and if you’re hitting 3 for 10 your batting average is .300 (very respectable!). “It’s such a fine line between joy and desperation” he said and FUCK if that isn’t the way?! And then you consider that BOTH STATISTICS MEAN YOU’RE FAILING MORE OFTEN THAN NOT.

“Love is not a sport of failure,” Chris says at one point, and that was a theme that ran through my mind the whole time I was writing the book. Because both Chris and Daphne have gone through it in their own ways — Chris after losing his brother, struggling in a sport he used to feel so sure about; Daphne after her divorce, trying to find ways to take care of herself and regain her self-worth — but they have to learn that love isn’t something you can track on a scorecard. It’s bigger than that, and they can let themselves feel it.

5. Baseball is romantic.

“How can you not be romantic about baseball?” If you’ve seen Moneyball you’ve heard that quote before, and if you’ve followed any baseball romance writer on social media you’ve DEFINITELY heard that quote before because god knows we love to use it lol. But it’s true. The stretch of outfield grass under the lights of a night game, the sound of a 100+ mph fastball hitting a catcher’s glove, the crack of a home run off a bat, the players all running onto the field after a walkoff win . . . I don’t know what to tell you, man, I find it all hella romantic. I put a lot of that into the book, not only about the sport specifically but also in the slow tension that explodes into big moments. I promise I am not trying to bat flip here, I’m just trying to tell you that *I* find the book so romantic!!! I’ve been rereading it slowly over the past few weeks, just enjoying spending time with Chris and Daphne again and watching them fall for each other. Toni Morrison famously said that you should write the book you want to read, and that’s exactly what I did.

You can now get The Art of Catching Feelings anywhere books are available, including the ebook or audiobook versions, or you can request at your local library!

And if you bought a ticket to my launch event at Tombolo Books this Thursday, June 20, I’ll see you there! Every year I’ve gotten to make a statement about how the Rays are out of town for my launch event so you will conveniently not have to worry about traffic, but THIS YEAR I get to make lots of extra exciting statements! For example, the Rays are out of town which is why they’re letting us use Tropicana Field for this event! Light “ballpark” fare will be served, including hot dogs and non-alcoholic drinks, with beer and wine available to purchase in case anyone wants to get drunk and heckle me in an homage to the book! (I WOULD absolutely cry, so you’d get the complete experience!)

I’ve been spending the last week signing preorders and packaging up swag to mail out, and I just want to say thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart. There were so many fun signing requests that really made my day (a non-exhaustive list of things I had to look up: Taylor Swift lyrics; how to draw the Cardinals mascot; how to draw a fire Elmo; Third Eye Blind lyrics; Instagram profiles so I could make absolutely sure the person was who I thought they were before I embarrassed myself with some inside joke, etc.). And several of you put very nice messages in the preorder swag form, just telling me to keep writing or that you enjoy this newsletter, and that all meant a lot to me.

Okay, I’m going to stop now or I really will start to cry and you know what they say! There’s no crying in baseball . . . unless you’re Chris Kepler, in which case don’t worry, it’ll all work out in the end. 💙

1. A triple is harder to hit than a home run!!!! If you’re ever on watch to see if a player is going to “hit for the cycle” (get a base hit, double, triple, and HR in one game), you know this to be true! I love when OTHER people say I hit this book out of the park, don’t get me wrong, but as far as I’m concerned it is even sexier to say I hit it IN the park and then fucking LEGGED IT OUT.

2. Me: can’t call my own book a home run. Also me: PLEASE watch as I demonstrate this very small stupid bit of knowledge which I just KNOW will be impressive like I’m a child reciting multiplication tables for Grandma.