Episode 293: Baseball and Romance as American Legend (with KD Casey)
/Calling all sports fans! We’re joined by author KD Casey to talk about America’s pastime, baseball, through the lens of modern legend, romance, and inclusivity.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of sexism, ableism, anti semitism, and homophobia.
Guest
KD Casey is a romance writer and baseball enthusiast living in the Washington, DC, area, whose journey into baseball spans watching the Orioles play in the `90s, the Pirates play in the 2000s, and the Nationals play at RFK Stadium in the early, ignominious days of the franchise. On the nonfiction side, she’s written for a variety of baseball analysis websites, though can primarily be found at Baseball Prospectus. She believes in high socks, unbuttoned jerseys, and the designated hugger, not the designated hitter. Come discuss writing and baseball on Twitter and Instagram at @KDCaseyWrites.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Julia recommends The Last Sun by KD Edwards!
- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Call to Action: Check out Join the Party, a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast co-hosted in part by Julia and Amanda. Search for Join the Party in your podcast app, or go to jointhepartypod.com.
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Transcript
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this is Episode 293 with author KD Casey, welcome to the show!
KD CASEY: Thank you all for having me. It's really exciting to be on here and talk a little about mythology and a little bit about baseball. So I'm excited to do that and also hear what y'all are drinking.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Always excited to tell about drinking, and also baseball?
AMANDA: Baseball.
KD CASEY: Baseball.
AMANDA: We are so excited to have you for many reasons, one of which is that you're among my favorite romance authors. And I am just so excited to connect what I think of as like one of the primary American mythologies, which is baseball, to the primary mythology of my life, which is reading romance novels And just everything we talked about here. There's just there's so much it's a buffet, and I am just delighted to be here talking to you. So can you tell us a little bit about how baseball became a central mythology of your life?
KD CASEY: Oh, goodness, that's a that's a really big question. So first of all, thank you, I parent primarily, right. And this is a lot of adjectives in a row queer, Jewish, baseball, romance, about people with disabilities. And that's like, a lot, I know. It's a very specific niche, but it's my niche. I feel like I've like feathered my nest there.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
KD CASEY: You know, it's always a question about, you know, sort of how do I got into baseball. I am from DC. So DC did not have a baseball team until I was an adult. And so, you know, the question is like, oh, did you grow up going to games? You know, did your usually people ask you did your male parent, you know, teach you to do these things, scoring and sort of having this like, you know, kid experience with like, the, you know, the hot dog and the whatever. And you see, you know, guys who are now in their 50s. I didn't have any of that. So the Nationals came to DC in 2005. They weren't like good for about five to six years after that. They were actually pretty good in 2005, and then collapsed, which is what we call foreshadowing. They were really, I mean, we're talking dumpster fire bad. It's a bunch of guys who are like, remember some guys level guys. And so what's interesting is that I guess the mythology of failure is really baked into baseball. So my first like, baseball experiences were really about failure, and like organizational failure, but individual failure, and I had seen a bunch of like pirates games, because I went to college and Pittsburgh, and I'm like, well, that's also failure. That was during their like, postseason drought. But I think that that's really the place that it starts to occupy. And that's why maybe it does sort of occupy this place in the American imagination, in particular, of just like, this is a game where even the best people at it fail more than they succeed. And they fail a lot. And they fail in big ways. And they fail in little ways. And that sort of just like, got implanted in my mind. Now, the Nationals then got better, which was, you know, a better viewing experience. But like, it's sort of the Anna Karenina effect of like, Oh, happy baseball teams are sort of alike, but unhappy. Invest in their own ways.
AMANDA: I love that line.
KD CASEY: And so I really write about and think about, like, what does it mean, for people at the edge of the game, like people who are not superstars who's like, we're sort of nibbling around the edge we're clinging to it. Versus I you know, I love sports romance, I read a ton of sports romance, but a lot of it is really focused on guys who are like, top of the game, you know, superstars, mega celebrities, and I'm like, I want the guy who you're in the grocery store with, and you're like, are you are you the backup catcher, maybe?
AMANDA: Could you just like put on a hat and like some very high socks and then I could really just like put you in the context that I might recognize you from?
KD CASEY: Yes. Basically, when once they take the hat you're like, I don't know who this is. Someone made a Sporcle quiz of Relief Pitchers without hats. And everyone's like [4:06]
JULIA: These are all the same white man, what are you doing?
AMANDA: And these are like serious baseball people. Like this are like dudes who like write for baseball perspectives, people who work for teams, and they're like, I have no idea.
KD CASEY: There's a reason that everyone's out there numbers because you wouldn't be able to tell from a distance or even close up who they are.
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: Yeah. My spicy baseball take is the the Yankees and the Red Sox and the teams that do not put the names on the back of the jersey. You need to.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: You gotta.
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: I can recognize Tom McKinley as as when he was a Yankee because he's recognizable in his body type. He's got it. He's got a really big ass.
JULIA: Yeah!
KD CASEY: His nickname was tight pants Tommy.
AMANDA: I didn't know that for sure. But I was like picking up what you're putting down from just from just your tone. So like good job on that.
KD CASEY: I know this isn't gonna come out for several months but it's a it's a big booty baseball week on the internet.
AMANDA: Incredible.
KD CASEY: So if you all are not familiar with that we can we can talk about that. But lik, yeah, I think to grow the game like put their names on the back of the jersey so I have any idea who this random, this random six foot tall white dude with a bad haircut is.
AMANDA: Yeah, my fiance has like a big brain take about basketball and why like personalities from basketball are so like imprinted in American consciousness and part of it is because there's only five of them on the court from each team at a time, the camera is right up there, they have nothing obstructing their face on like baseball on like football and like hockey. And the camera angles are so close, the court is so much smaller on like soccer, like you don't see them like vastly running from one end to another like they are right there all the time. And so I know what KD looks like in many emotions, and in many states and in all these different uniforms because there's nothing there obstructing the face.
KD CASEY: And I think that's really important. I think the one thing I don't know a lot about most continuous play sports and I will cop to that, like I will admit to that. But the thing about basketball, I believe as the free agency is very like limited in terms of time and so it turns into like it's about the drama and the soap opera and the narrative of it.
AMANDA: Yes.
KD CASEY:
Which I think there needs to be more of, right? Like I, that's what I like. Baseball this year because of the lockout had a free agency period of like a week and a half and I'm like, give me more of that I want to see a full on Susan Lucci like slap as part of this free agency period.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: And so I think basketball really, really does that in a in an important way. And you're right, like absolutely unlimited number of people, nothing on the face. No random parade of six foot tall white guys with bad haircuts who come out and pitch half inning. Not that I don't love a relief pitcher. But still-
AMANDA: I think I interrupted you though in your explanation of how baseball became meaningful to you.
KD CASEY: My experience was this sort of like particular failure. And the the sort of nationals playing particularly at RFK Stadium in DC has like this mythos to it in and of itself, there was the day that the rat crawled into like the circuit breaker box and like or cable box and chewed through all these cables so TV feed ran out. And the rat [7:01] which is disgusting.
AMANDA: And you're like classic, same, me as well.
KD CASEY: Like. if you want to have a ghost story here. And so my sister was really, really into it and is like the best, she has the best working knowledge of like that era Nationals of anybody who is not on the team. I shall add to that. So she was at a minor league baseball game. She lives in Montana. So she was at a minor league baseball game in Billings. And she sees that the manager or the hitting coach for the team used to play for Nationals, this guy named Willie Harris. And so she goes up to him. And she's like, "Oh, my God, I loved you, as a National, you were terrific. I love watching you play." And he's like, "I don't really even have a memory of being on that team." And she's like, "I have a card, will you sign it?"
AMANDA: Incredible.
KD CASEY: So like that is sort of the place that came to occupy of this very, like almost quasi anonymized dudes sort of toiling away at this thing that they usually were not very good at. And I know I'm not selling that at all. But I don't know something in my brain when I want that.
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: Like, I want to know what it's like to have like this. Like, you can see success. But success is always a little beyond your grasp. That to me is where sort of mythos lives, right? You know, this like Tantalus type figure, I think is really compelling. And that's sort of like what makes baseball to me very compelling of you can have these guys who are fantastically successful, but you also have this sort of like, majority of them who, you know, success is there. And they could infer it, but like they just sort of scrape by it and it's very, very temporary, and it's very fleeting. And I think that that is sort of like, I don't know, it's very relatable.
JULIA: This feels like a modern version of Jason and the Argonauts, where it's like people had to compete to be on the crew of the Argonaut. But there are several members of the Argonaut that no one remembers.
KD CASEY: Yeah, and that's basically it, right?
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: And you have like, they're like, "Oh, you won a World Series? You're a dude who played for, you know, two seasons." I wish my brain were not occupied with like being able to turn on a baseball game and being like, he pitched 28 innings for the Nationals seven years ago. I was like, what was in my brain that got shoved over to be like, oh, I remember that guy. He was he was great. When he was on the Nationals. He pitched 28 innings over three years. And so I think like there's this sort of American-ness to it, that I think I did a lot of thinking after you mentioned sort of the mythology of baseball of like, what makes baseball sort of occupy this place in American Mythology. I have some thoughts. I would love to hear your thoughts about it.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: It is really sort of like part of the national whatever, in a way that maybe other sports are less so.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: I think part of it might be because of like, when baseball was at its height, it was like just becoming nationally accessible to people. And so you kind of create this like mythos of these certain players that you hear about on the radio who like you can hear the Brooklyn Dodgers playing a game while not in Brooklyn. And so these names kind of become these larger than life figures in people's brains. And this is also a period of time where like, you have the Depression happening you have the 2nd World War happening and so not only are these like almost mythological figures or folkloric heroes, they also become this embodiment for what someone can achieve during a period of time that is extremely difficult for the country.
AMANDA: I think there is totally a like historical memory of it like a my, you know, my grandfather, who grew up on Long Island, right? And like around New York City in the 30s snd 40s was the one who was taking me to you know, Minor League games in Long Island and it is that kind of Americana of you know, summertime grass hotdogs, beer, like selling pickup trucks. Like this is what I was taught that Americana is and American this is and in thinking more in my adulthood about like, what is the project of mythos building around the US and what we say America is like there is the obviously incorrect and you know, fraught kind of narrative of the cultural melting pot salad bowl, and everything is democracy, everything's from the people like there is no you know, king or royal family to root for there is the illusion of being multicultural, even though it is in many ways a Christian country, and people are others who are not, in some ways baseball, I think stands in for that. And we can talk about kind of the ways that like the sport itself, and the way it is played and the invention of it being you know, not soccer makes it particularly well suited to this task. But I think that without kind of like tribalism around the place where we are and states and State pride, not really being a thing in a country, defined as a federation, rooting for your baseball team kind of stands for, like, who you root for, and what you root for. And it's a cheap game that you can play with paper towel roll, and like some wadded up newspaper. So that's kind of my thought around like how, I don't know how baseball stands in as Americans sort of statehood and bonding and nationhood and pilgrimages in a way that allows us to kind of preserve this illusion of not having an agenda as a country.
KD CASEY: Yeah, so I think it's really interesting. You both so first of all, like yes, that is where my brain was at. So like, thank you, particularly, like so so beautifully. i It's interesting. You both mentioned New York, right so that New York is this like hub of baseball, which is true. And so I'm Jewish. I write about Jewish characters largely, you know, this sort of like overlap between Jews, New York and baseball is just like very strong. Obviously, we got you know, Sandy Koufax and all of that built and Greenberg and Moberg and like, all of that sort of thing, but I think it's really important to like, like, know, the history. So for baseball, there's this myth that it's sort of like a rose Field of Dreams style, right. It's out in Iowa, in the cornfields, whatever. It's an urban game. Yeah. And it is the the urban people's dream of pastoral ism is sort of how I think about it, right? They built streetcars and they built baseball stadiums to have people have someplace to go on the streetcar. Right? Yeah. So it was like go to exotic and pestle New Jersey, right? Yeah, good air. My grandfather was born in Brooklyn in 1903. And they moved or he was born in Manhattan in 1903. And they moved to Brooklyn for the good air. It's by the sea. See, you can see it. Yeah. And so I think that there's like this mythos of like Field of Dreams, stuff of like white Christian, do farmers in Iowa who's like, we're using broom handles or whatever. And you're like, This is an urban game played by people who live in cities. As you said, it's a paper towel roll and a wadded up, you know, piece of newspaper. One of my books is called unwritten rules. It came out last October. It is about a gay Jewish baseball player who is hard of hearing, but part of that book, he plays a game called volotea, which is like a it's a version of stickball that they play primarily in the Dominican Republican and there's a version they play in Venezuela. His love interest is from Venezuela. So they play this and it's literally a broom handle. And these like bottle caps or like detergent bottle caps there because people are like, are envisioning like the soda caps, but they're actually like, pretty big. I mean, they kind of frisbee, which is kind of cool. But yeah, it's, you know, sort of like the fundamental nature of the game is you need a stick you need somebody to throw it a stick and you need like four landmarks and you're done. Right? Yeah, you don't need Iowa you don't need to put down your cornfield to give enough space to play. You need a couple of friends, a couple of objects and a lot.
AMANDA: Yeah, and the alleyway right or like the railroad apartment where you can play this, can be of varying sizes, something that I find so fascinating to this day is that like baseball stadiums, at least this sort of first wave of the ones that were built, just fit where they fit in the city. And like there are varying distances of what it takes to make a home run in different stadiums and make a home run the hit in various stadiums. And like, I find that so fascinating, like, we are not talking about regulation, Olympic swimming pools or regulation, football fields that can be built in, you know, places where people are not already living.
KD CASEY: Yeah. So you know, one of the things that is really common to baseball fans in particular, and it's sort of like this universally pleasing experience among baseball fans is when you're on an airplane, and you look out the window, and yeah, do you look for baseball fields? Yeah.
AMANDA: I looked for fields. Yeah, baseball fields and driving through to like when we ever were like driving, and like seeing fields lit up at night as well. It's just very like, that's like a place where people are at. It's just, yeah.
KD CASEY: It's pleasing. And it has all these like wacky dimensions and like, it'll just be like it ran up to the road. So like, the outfield is just like those weird shape.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: Like that, to me is very much like part of the mythos of as you said, like, the field dimensions can vary how long you know how long a home run is, can vary. The fields, you know, conditions will vary.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: And so it really is this sort of like urban people's finding of green space where or you know, green or dirt space, wherever it was convenient, or is convenient, but has become part of this, like everyone envisions a cornfield in Iowa of random white people mowing their corn now and to have enough space to play ball. That to me is like an interesting tension. I want to not diminish like, I write romance. So like my character is also smooth. I know that we're talking mostly about baseball, there is a healthy amount of like, mouth mouth in the books as well.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah. And when you describe like, oh, yes, well, obviously I write about queer Jewish disabled baseball players, not a thing that I'd walk into a bookstore asking for, but reading it for the first time, I'm like, Yes, of course, like good. Like, I'm very privileged to grow up in a world where these kinds of books are available, and you know how to write them. So like, thank you for doing that. Because I can look forward to one every so often, that I get to enjoy. How was the experience of publishing romance and finding community, hopefully, among other romance writers and readers? What's that been like?
KD CASEY: Yeah, so if your listeners are not familiar with like, what defines a romance novel, I always like to try to give a very brief definition of it. Because I think that people for good or for ill have like a real sort of like visual and impression of like, what Romance is, and that's fine. That's a kind of imprint to work off of. But basically, there are three sort of tenants in writing a Romance Novel, it has to have a central love story, it has to have a happily ever after, or happily for now, where the characters who are in love end up with each other and alive, the alive is very important.
AMANDA: It is.
KD CASEY: And then the last one is actually I think one that sometimes gets left off the definition, but for me is very important. It has to have an optimistic ending in that characters have achieved what they set out to do. Not that they are morally good. Not that they are you know that the world is suddenly a fine and hopeful place. Because we live in, in this society.
AMANDA: Chuckles darkly, yeah.
KD CASEY: You know, my main characters are queer, disabled, jurists, baseball players, they have a lot of marginalization. I don't end with those marginalization is going away. Nor do I end with like baseball, suddenly figuring out that, like, let's, let's be kind in structural ways to marginalize people, because organized baseball is not. But it has to have some kind of like, accomplishment of goal. And I think that that sometimes gets just left out of just like, oh, it's some people when they fall in love and whatever. And you're like, no, no, like they they set out to do something and they're going to they're going to do it by the end. Much in the way that I think like a lot of fantasy books. You know, if you're setting out to carry the ring in the Mordor, you better throw that ring in in a volcano at the end of it, right? And not like just bummer right off an eagle.
AMANDA: Yeah, I've never heard it summarize quite that way and I so appreciate it. Because when I talk to people about loving romance, it's not just a love story, and lots of romances. You know, the things I remember are not even necessarily about the romantic interest or that central relationship. It's about like, where this character was at in their career or their family life or like the, you know, the place they are in the world like it is the like, mundane little hero's journey of our individual lives that really gets to be served up to us in a setting devoid of the fantastical, which I think is at least for my flavor of nerd. That's the kind of stuff I was reading before I was like, oh, like something about something about contemporary romance really scratches an itch for me and is also way gayer than the options that can get in sci-fi fantasy. For the most part.
KD CASEY: I feel like Queer Fantasy is having a moment. Queer Fantasy Romance is also having a moment I tend not to read a whole lot of it. I primarily read contemporary Sports Romance, which is not a surprise but I'll read basically everything so like I like historical, I love a ghost story. Like there's ghosts, Historical Ghost Romance is a thing.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: It's a thing!
KD CASEY: And it's fantastic!
JULIA: If you have some recommendations, I would love if you dropped them right here.
AMANDA: Yeah, whenever I see that I slide it to Julia. I'm like, not for me. But for you.
KD CASEY: So ghost romance is really having a moment. And I know you asked about community and I know I haven't answered the question because like, yeah.
AMANDA: But what is more romance community than being like, what are you like, I have a list of recommendations for you like that is that is all I do with fellow romance readers.
KD CASEY: Let me roll out you know, one of the things is always like, what I have a lot of friends who are frankly, straight cis, like cis hot dudes, because baseball, and a lot of them are like, I've never read a romance novel. But I want to, what would you recommend? And I'm like, what do you like? And they're like, oh, I love historical fiction, or I love intergenerational stories set in cities, or I love ghost stories. And I'm like, you can find a romance novel that does any of those things, right? You can find a romance novel, you can find 20 romance novels that do any of those things. So like, tell me exactly like to have very fine grain size. What do you like? And I will help you try to find it. The number one complaint slash compliment I get is, Well, now my Kindle recommendations are abs.
AMANDA: Yes, yes.
KD CASEY: Just a sea of abs.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: What have you done? They're like, I used to just read historical biographies and now I'm getting recommended abs books and I'm like, my work is done, thank you.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: Diana Biller's goodness, The Widow of Rose House is a-
AMANDA: A great one.
KD CASEY: -[21:23] story. Have you read it?
AMANDA: I have. I highly recommend Julia do so.
JULIA: I'm literally writing it down right now.
AMANDA: It's also it's set along the the Metro North train line here in New York.
JULIA: Oh, look at that.
KD CASEY: That is a it's Gilded Age. It's New York. I love Americans and historicals. I love ghost stories. The opening chapter to that is maybe my favorite opening chapter I read last year.
JULIA: Wow.
KD CASEY: Like it has this really cool structure to it. Yeah, I would I recommend that one. Just every time. Jordan Hawk has a series of queer sort of almost like Lovecraftian Horror Romance books with like, they're very pulpy. And I mean that in like, the best way I love Pulp. So I super recommend his books. And he's written a bunch of them. And it's all like, same couple investigates whatever for like a series. So-
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: If you love X Files, Monster of the Week, the historical and they're gay and they smooch, like, that is for you.
JULIA: That is for me.
KD CASEY: I'm trying to think of other sort of historical ghost romances. I have not yet read I know, Charish Reid just came out with a ghost romance that is contemporary. And it's like a paranormal investigator ghost romance. And that to me is just like, put that in my brain. Have you all seen Paranormal Home Investigations?
JULIA: No. But my joke is that they stole that from my husband, because he's both a building inspector and also has the site.
KD CASEY: So if people are unfamiliar, this is a cult classic TV show done in Canada, where they have like people who have like a home inspector, maybe it's parent or a home inspection, not investigation. So they have a home inspector, and they have somebody who has the site come in and like investigate what's going on in the house. And the person with the site is like, it's clearly ghosts, there's clearly like activity, blah, blah, blah, and the home inspector was having the time of his life is like, man, your doors hung on wrong. Like, that's why it keeps opening and closing. You can see it's clearly unbalanced, or like, you have trees outside your windows, and there's you need to trim them. They're scraping against your windows at night when there's wind.
JULIA: My husband would be like, "Oh, you have a bad feeling when you go down to your basement? The wirings wrong down there. That's why you feel those EMFs"
KD CASEY: Basically, yeah. And so the whole show, it's, I mean, it is just delicious. And so I like I want to read books that are like, like, like, like that set into that very micro niche universe. And I believe Charish is set there. And I think there are a couple of others that are coming out that I'm just like snapping them up, because I'm just like, this is so terrific.
JULIA: Incredible. I love that.
KD CASEY: I don't do a whole lot of monster stuff. Like I know monster fucking is having its sort of heyday. That is something that a lot of people like it is sort of in my I don't love sun dried tomatoes and I'm not a huge fan of monster fuck. But like it's not a judgment thing. It's a taste thing.
AMANDA: You know, yeah.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Not for me.
KD CASEY: And people seem to be having a really good time with it. But I love ghost stories. And so like the fact that those are having kind of a little mini heyday is making me very happy. And I've written a baseball, baseball ghost story.
AMANDA: Well, there is no better podcast for you to talk about your love of ghost stories. What are some that you perhaps grew up with or that you love to think and talk about?
KD CASEY: Oh, that's a that's a big question. So you know, it's interesting that the number one thing that people the number one sort of piece of baseball media that people kind of are familiar with is a ghost story, right?
AMANDA: It is. Yeah. Field of Dreams.
KD CASEY: Yeah. So Field of Dreams is a ghost story. So like there's this overlap between. I feel like Baseball and like the supernatural in ways that I just, you know maybe in Canada there's a mental hockey ghost stories that I'm just not familiar with, you know, maybe there's like ghosts of like on soccer fields in places that are very a soccer culture a bit like that, to me is like interesting that like we have, you know Field of Dreams we obviously have like Angels in the Outfield, which feels weird to mention, but like, like, there's this sort of like, super natural baseball fiction is just normalized.
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: The Natural is sort of, it's not a ghost story. But it's definitely supernatural-ly if, if you all are familiar with it, there's the movie, and there's the book. So the book is I want to say it's Bernard Malamud who I grew up like reading a lot of his stories, because he's Jewish. I feel like there's the book and then the movie has like this, like, weird, dreamlike feeling to it. And there's like a lightning strike that may or may not be like, driven by like this dude's bat being super naturally blessed. And there's just like this baseball league feeling of being this world and the next world being very close. And like, maybe there's a bunch of that with basketball, and I just don't know about it, but I have never seen it.
AMANDA: I have to say, like, I think something about the experience of attending baseball games, of you know, walking in from the denseness of a city again, in most places, and you enter and then suddenly there is this, you know, oasis, like a park, but no trees, like it's just open and it's just space. And this idea of like, when you hit a homerun, it just like goes and goes until it disappears. Like there is something kind of mythical about it, not to mention, the sort of like elevation of folk heroes, the historical memory of like, what this team was for my grandparents and what it is for me now and just like passing along and ritualization like it is for so many people, they go to baseball like others go to worship, and there are the scents and the rising and falling and the chants like everything about it is ritualized in a way that I think makes complete sense that you would have a number of you know, mythical V.
KD CASEY: Yeah, and I think like, you know, again, in sort of when you asked me about this, I just like my, my brain started turning Americans are very, at least like macro cultural. majoritarian. Americans are very time-bound, right? Something starts at 1 PM. You're there at 1 PM.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: I'm Jewish. Yeah, we were on we are event-based people, not time-based people. So like, how long does something take? I don't know. It takes one wedding's worth of wedding, right? As opposed to there's a clock and it's counting down and we're all very punctual. And baseball is one of those things that you have like, this experience of not being time-bound, right? It's the game goes on as long as it needs to, right?
AMANDA: True.
KD CASEY: There's no like, oh, it's down to the last few seconds, which can itself be really compelling. Like, there's no such thing as real, I mean, there's a walk-off home run, but there's not a buzzer beater in baseball. And so I think that also lends to sort of like the dreaminess, the mythos, the sort of you can see ghosts hovering, you can see sort of ritualization of, as you said, folk heroes and stuff like that. And I think that that just kind of lends itself to it. And just makes for excellent ghost in myth and folklore kind of stuff. I'll do another book recommendation. There's a graphic novel called The Golem's Mighty Swing if you all are familiar with it.
AMANDA: No.
KD CASEY: It is set in I want to say the 1910s or 20s, during the barnstorming era in baseball. So this is when teams went around it like that's [28:25], right? You're like on a bus and you're traveling and you're sort of like appearing and a lot of the record we have is from these old newspapers recording sort of like this guy came in and pitched six innings and then all of a sudden he was over in the next town.
AMANDA: Oh, wow.
KD CASEY: And there's these like mythical figures that kind of pop up during the barnstorming era.
AMANDA: Also, Americans love like road tripping folk heroes, like let's think about Paul Bunyan. Let's think about Johnny Appleseed. Like we've dived into these figures before, but there is a like, kind of wandering aspect to it that Americans loving our folk heroes.
KD CASEY: Yeah, there's a guy named John Donaldson. He was a black pitcher in the barnstorming era. In particular, he's the guy who Satchel Paige said taught him to pitch.
JULIA: Wow.
AMANDA: Wow.
KD CASEY: Yeah. And there is a whole like society of people like this whole community of people set about reconstructing where he was, when he was, how he pitched from newspapers, and both sort of like during the micro newspaper era, but also it because he was black, a lot of the sort of like height of the black press in the US at the time. And so these whole society of people like kind of reconstructing his life from just these like, box scores.
AMANDA: Wow.
KD CASEY: And he just, you know, every story about him is a little larger than the previous story. Like, again, if you teach Satchel Paige how to pitch. And you know, that sort of thing. And so yeah, it's this, like, as you said, Johnny Appleseed-like figure, but it's a real dude, who we can sort of follow around. And you know, how good was he? Well, they didn't have like speed guns. I don't we don't know how fast through. Box scores tell a really good story but they don't tell like the full story, so you have to sort of mentally reconstruct from reading a box for what happened during the game. But yeah, so like, there's this book called The Golem's Mighty Swing. It's about a Jewish baseball team during the barnstorming era that has a black player on it. This was, you know, there's a color line in Major League Baseball. So, you know, black people who are as historically excluded from playing Major League Baseball from the 1800s to, you know, 1947. But during the barnstorming era, it's a lot, you know, with these sort of non affiliated teams. It's, it's a lot, I wouldn't say more integrated, but it was more integrated than we then we think of it as, and so it's about their sort of experiences in playing in the American South, which, you know, it's not a romance. I'm gonna say that like, there is you know, I wouldn't say graphic depictions of violence, but there is violence mentioned as part of the story. But it's really an interesting sort of like, yeah, you get this, this mythmaking era of sort of roaming around and being able to sort of like, subscribe to this mythos during this specific period of time, but it's a lot of based on real people who really existed and really do these things, which is just kind of neat.
JULIA: That is neat.
AMANDA: I love that. I am going to go order that book from my local independent bookstore in the kitchen as I grab a refill. So Julia, why don't you join me and we'll be right back.
JULIA: Sounds good.
[midroll]
JULIA: Hey, this is Julia. Welcome to the refill. I made fresh pesto with basil from my own garden and it's incredible, and I'm so happy to share it with you all. I'm especially excited to share it with our newest patrons, Chibi Yokai, Lili, Logan, and Kasandra, you join the ranks of our incredible supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Daisy, Froody Chick, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Lily, Little Vomit Spiders Running Around, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, and Zazi and of course our legend level patrons who all have beautiful gardens that have herbs that they can use in dishes that they can then serve to their friends. Oh my god, I'm so jealous, Arianna, Audra, Bex, Clara, Iron Havoc, Morgan, Mother of Vikings, Sarah, & Bea Me Up Scotty. And if you'd like to join our Patreon and get incredible rewards like recipe cards for cocktails and mocktails for every episode, you can do that by going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast. Joining the Patreon allows us to make this show possible and we are so incredibly thankful for everyone who joins. I have been absolutely loving my new hammock where I can go out during my lunch break, eat a little lunch, layout, and then read a book and the book that I've been reading lately is a recommendation from one of my cousins Chris, and it's called The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards, it's all about like a new Atlantean society that's based on tarot cards and the way that the magic and the magic system is set up is really really cool and interesting. Check it out. I'm pretty sure it's part of a trilogy that is The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards really, really good stuff. And speaking of both cool magic systems and fun things to do, you need to check out Join the Party Join the Party is a D&D actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. They welcome everyone to the table from longtime players to folks who have never touched a role-playing game before. You can either start with Campaign 1, which will both teach you how to play D&D and as a dose of classic high fantasy gameplay, or you can start with Campaign 2, which is D&D mechanics in a modern superhero -entric setting. Or if you want to learn how to play something like Monster of the Week, we're currently doing a Camp-Paign which is a Monster of the Week campaign set around Counselors-in-Training at a haunted summer camp. Trust me, you're gonna love that one. So what are you waiting for? Pull up a chair and Join the Party! 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[midroll]
JULIA: So Katie, one of our favorite questions to ask anyone who joins us on the show is what's your favorite cocktail?
KD CASEY: So I will confess I am not much of a cocktail drinker. I have the alcohol tolerance of somebody who [38:53]
JULIA: Fair enough.
KD CASEY: [38:56] to say not. But I wrote a little story for an anthology called Love All Year which is a bunch of like little romance stories like novella, novelette novella length set around various holidays, and part of that book included a Manischewitz cocktail.
AMANDA: Brave! Bold!
KD CASEY: So I mentioned a Manischewitz cocktail in my story. And everyone's like, well, you have to make it now and I'm like, no!
JULIA: Must I?
KD CASEY: No.
AMANDA: So what do you do? What do you do?
KD CASEY: So first of all, if folks aren't familiar with Manischewitz, it's like grape juice but sweeter. It's like, I don't know somewhere between a wine and a syrup.
AMANDA: I would say not a not a craveable taste, like if you've ever had like rhiwbina but didn't dilute it. That's what you're approaching.
KD CASEY: So, I had a friend who once tried to get drunk off it and he's just like my stomach hurts.
JULIA: Oh, no!
AMANDA: You have a hangover before you get drunk. I would say.
KD CASEY: Yes, I would say that you get a sugar hangover in particular.
AMANDA: Yes.
KD CASEY: So I got a bunch of like lemons, limes, orange like peel. I made simple syrup, believe it or not, to put a man on trumpets, but I boiled it with a bunch of citrus peels to like get some bitterness and some palatability in there. So I combined it with that I combined it with some of the juice from those various citrus fruits with Manischewitz and just a lot of crushed ice. It was delicious.
AMANDA: Oooh! Love it.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: I love that for you.
KD CASEY: Yeah, you could add rum if it made you happy.
AMANDA: I can also see like a like a gin and tonic type thing where you just sort of like sweetness of the Manischewitz kind of gives a flavor that tonic would and then you just use like, you know, seltzer?
KD CASEY: I actually did put, yeah, I'm flavored seltzer in it as well. Because I'm curious. And that is a thing in my house at all times of like, cans of store brand unflavored salts or I was like, oh, Lacroix is so fancy. Like, I just want to [40:46] 99 cent filter. But yeah, it was actually really tasty. It tasted like Sangria if Sangria didn't get you drunk.
JULIA: Fair enough.
AMANDA: That's pretty good.
KD CASEY: So if you're going for a very low, very low alcohol cocktail, it was delicious. So think about that for Passover. If anyone wants to do that.
JULIA: There you go. So, KD, I have a question about sports superstition. I know sports, in general, has a lot of superstition, especially for fans and for like teams in general. I know in my household, my dad has like two little Yoda statues that were not allowed to move the Islanders are playing a hockey game. Also, there's a running joke in my family, which is none of my dad's teams have ever won their championships since he got married to my mom. And he's like, I don't blame you, Dianne, but I just wanted to point this out.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
KD CASEY: Oooh, Dianne.
JULIA: So Dianne's a little bit of a curse in the family. She's not allowed to enter the room if they're in a Playoffs, and like there's an important game coming because she's done that before and then they like immediately lost and my dad is like, what? You knew this was gonna happen.
KD CASEY: You're putting reverberations out into the universe, and you don't understand the consequences.
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: Right?
JULIA: Yeah, one time. Just as an aside, one time, I want to say the Mets were in the World Series, because my dad's a Mets fan. And my mom was watching in one room, and my dad was watching in another room. And for some reason, there was a delay on the TV that my dad was watching and not a delay on the one that my mom was watching. And he just heard her gasp loudly. And he's like, what, what? And then like, immediately after the other team scored a home run and he was like, Dianne, you can't keep doing this.
KD CASEY: The Mets are cursed enough.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. That was kind of my question. Like, there are some like extremely famous curses for example, like the Curse of the Bambino is a huge one. Where do you think the kind of superstition and folkloric nature of like sports superstition comes from?
KD CASEY: So I think that there's like this relationship between players and fans, that is just, you know, in sports, it's when you're at a really good concert, you kind of feel that way that like, membrane between you two is like very transparent and becomes like less and less permeable, and really good performers will have sort of the illusion of removing it without the actual removal. I will say so there's a writer for baseball [43:10] named Patrick Dubuque, who is one of my favorite baseball writers and his tribute to Felix Hernandez, who is a tremendous pitcher for the Seattle Mariners. And his tribute to his last game in particular talks about that sort of like, you know, Felix Hernandez never pitched in the Postseason. The Mariners during the time were thoroughly mediocre except for him. But he had this like effective this removal of that barrier between himself and his audience. And so I think that that's maybe where the superstition comes from. The Nationals, I don't know if anyone heard won the World Series in 2019.
JULIA: Whooo!
AMANDA: Heyyy!
KD CASEY: In epic, mythic fashion. So, you know, the sort of like recap was they were really bad at the beginning of the season, they accomplished their like best comeback in baseball history to the barely scraping to the Postseason as part of a wildcard team. They then got home field advantage, which was a big deal when the wild card game and again, I was there and it was amazing.
AMANDA: Oh, my God.
KD CASEY: In like mythic fashion, and then went on to just all sorts of stuff happened during that run in the Postseason. I was like if I do not put my hairband on my left wrist every day-
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: -I know Juan Soto is not going to hit a home run.
JULIA: And it's wild. It's wild that we like truly believe that we can like influence these things by the individual things that we do and I feel like every sports fan I know feels that way to some extent.
AMANDA: Like a personal responsibility to help.
JULIA: Yeah!
KD CASEY: Right? They need me, they need me to put on my hair band on my left wrist. They need me to wear like, I have a set of like little like these are outfielder glove lace bracelets. That company makes it a really neat, like I have to wear that every day. I have to sort of like do all of these things in particular order because I'm going to disturb the vibrations of the universe and like that will send Stephen Strasburg. Like, change up slightly where it shouldn't be. And like my rational brain is like, that's ridiculous. And my irrational brain is like, if I do not do this, I am personally to blame.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: That's how I feel about ghosts, though where it's like, if I can take the opportunity to not offend a ghost. I'm gonna do it.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Maybe I don't need to fully believe in it. But like, why wouldn't I, if I can?
JULIA: Yeah, yeah.
KD CASEY: You know, it doesn't hurt. It might help. I had a baseball podcast with a couple of friends for a long time called Resting Pitchface. And one of the things that we did was like ritualistic [45:36], which is like this, like Ashkenazi old country, rite of like, you hit the evil eye, you're trying to divert the evil eye away from you. I’m assuming people are more or less familiar with that as a concept. But like, I would never say the Nationals are going to win today without immediately doing [45:52].
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: Because like, I have drawn the ire of the evil eye on to like, poor little Josiah Gray, who's out there trying to pitch.
AMANDA: Absolutely.
KD CASEY: He did a great job yesterday, but like, that sort of thing is just so endemic to it and I think it is because this illusion of there's no barrier, right?
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: I can go to a game and hold up signs to tell the outfielder that he's doing an amazing job, sweetie. There's a cheering section in Nationals Park um, called Section 100. And literally like whiteboard like reusable whiteboard like scroll signs, and we will absolutely be like, you're doing amazing! [46:34] after the game!
JULIA: So cute.
AMANDA: So pure. And I love that metaphor too of the barrier because my friends and I have like a shelf in our library of baseball of Jewish baseball books. And Summerland is like has the pride of place there because, you know, Michael Chabon, I think, does the in some ways, the most inevitable pairing I've ever heard of, which is like the fae and baseball and like, what is more liminal, more fae, more mystical, more, you know, like suburban fantasy than a baseball game that can lead you to the otherworldly.
KD CASEY: Yeah. And I think that there's always that feeling of like, as you said, that you're at a park that it's treeless. And so you have this sort of like feeling of largeness, even in a very small area. And like, again, that barrier, that barrier it to sort of like be infinite is a little thinner. Which sounds really weird. If you're like, I just am here to yell at the Mets to do better.
AMANDA: No.
KD CASEY: No Met should ever say the word elbow, by the way, like that, like they can't even think the word elbow at this point. Tell your dad.
JULIA: No, I'll let him know.
KD CASEY: But I think that that, yeah, it kind of occupies that, that space in terms of imagination of just like, oh, I'm so close to like, a world beyond. But also I got like a beer and a hot dog, and a scorebook and I'm gonna, I'm gonna yell at somebody.
AMANDA: I think that's a really great transition into the last thing I want to talk to you about, which is a amazing article you published in Alma, shout out to Alma, in 2021. All about doing romance Jewishly, where you talk about Romans, we love our initialisms and so do Jews for that matter, and talking about the [48:09] of it all. Can you talk a little bit about like you were saying earlier, you know, we're not ignoring oppression, right? We're not ignoring systemic bias. We're not ignoring the fact that like life is difficult and more challenges are going to come up. So how do you approach optimism? How do you romance Jewishly, I want to make sure we have space to talk about that in this episode as well.
KD CASEY: So first of all, we're in like a heyday of Jewish Romance right now. And I think people don't necessarily know that. There's an article that came out in [48:36] a couple of days ago, that is just like a catalog of Jewish Romance. There's dozens of us. Dozens! And we have like our own little community and if anybody is a Jewish Romance reader or fan or writer you know we will happily induct you.
AMANDA: You have people.
KD CASEY:
Yeah into you know, into we have a little Discord server. But you know, I think we're in a in a really like a heyday of Jewish Romance of people doing it a bunch of different ways. So, just just sort of shout out a few but there's there's a lot if you want Historical Jewish Romance, you can read Felicia Grossman, you can read Rose Lerner. If you want sort of contemporary very like sweet Hallmark movies but with a very with a little edge you can read I'm Stacey Agdern. If you want queer Jewish romance and Jews and queerness operate in different ways than Christian sort of Christian macro culture and queerness there's a whole bunch of those Jennet Alexander's I Kissed a Girl and then there's, I will give a shout out to Roz Alexander's Matzo Match because it is a Passover-themed the high heat lesbian romance and it is tasty.
AMANDA: I saw that I think on your on your Insta story and I was like, don't need yeast, this is all I got. Like, this is great.
KD CASEY: How do I put this? That contains a line, "I built this table and I'm gonna fuck you over it" and I'm like-
[cheering]
AMANDA: This is my heritage.
KD CASEY: I was like, oh! I was like my hair caught fire. I was like Roz! Roz! They were like.
AMANDA: Oh, dear!
KD CASEY: And I was like, no, I want more. And they have a whole series of like holiday themes like primarily FF, Jewish Romance, but with some nonbinary characters as well thrown in there. Again, whatever you want, we can make a Jewish version of that happen. But no, one of the things I really think about and write about is like, I don't think that an optimistic ending means the end to all of our generalizations. And I don't like end everybody clapped endings, particularly, I want to be conscious of a reader when they close the book that they have to go back to the world as it is.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: And so I do try to have optimism, I do try to sort of show a progression. I love things over long time periods. So unwritten rules takes place in like 2016 and 2019. Technically, you can sort of pick it up from the book, it's not actually like specifically named, but like the world is it was different in those two years. You know, at one point, he's sort of like, you know, gay marriage was just, you know, legalized by the Supreme Court in 2016. Like, I think that that's something that is even now forgotten the issue of like, oh, it's been around for, you know, no, that was, that was 2015. It was May 2015.
AMANDA: Yeah, no, it feels like it was 20 years ago.
KD CASEY: You know, that's not very long ago. And so, you know, he, the main character is really operating under a world in which he grew up where he couldn't get married, legally, that, you know, even though Jewish homophobia is different like it's not, there's no hell, so you can't be damned to hell. But like, there's this very, like strong heteronormativity of like, you will get married, you will have babies that he's sort of like denied because he also wants to play baseball. And so there's sort of all of that. And like, you have to be sort of conscientious of the world as it is, but still try to find like, a very small place in the universe for your characters to say, but I want to make this a little better, right? I want to just like maybe inch along a little bit. Mostly because like writing about massive structural change turns into like a manual, you're like, I don't, I don't necessarily think that that's accomplishable in a realistic way, and have the reader close the book and say, well, the world still kind of sucks. But I wanted to give him like a little like sliver of optimism of the fact that like the current feeling in Major League Baseball right now is that there are players who are out to their teams, but not out publicly. And I think but that to me was like the sort of like, world getting better kind of place, I had to leave him even if I'm like world get better faster.
AMANDA: Yeah. And maybe that's why you know, queer sports, romance hits, so different for many of us that are not otherwise, at least for myself, and not otherwise that interested in sports. Because it's not like two players fall in love, they have a press release, and the worlds different like that, that is a wish fulfillment that I think is valuable in some ways. But to quote you to you from this excellent article that we will, we will link in the description, you describe the ending of unwritten rules as where characters have to make peace with the world as it is, but with the promise to undertake changing it for the better, which strikes me as very clear, very Jewish. And we did not dwell on the incredible, rich, loving depictions of disability in your books as well, but also strikes me as something that, you know, disabled people are so good at by force, you know, of figuring out how to do this challenge, and then do the next one, there's never not going to be one. And so the question is, how do we change the world for the better make this life a little easier?
KD CASEY: I appreciate that. Thank you. That's, it's I'm glad that that was meaningful to you. I, you know, I'm sort of the place of I see things in baseball getting better. And that, to me, gives me a lot of hope, even if the world around us says that hope has to be a practice and a habit at this point. Because like, there's a lot of shit out there that's not.
JULIA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: I'll pick on one thing, just because I've seen it really changed in the last year. So one of the big things that's happening in baseball right now is working conditions for minor leaguers are significantly changing and that there's a lot more attention paid to it now than there was maybe even five years ago. I'm wearing my little Unionized the Minors shirt-
AMANDA: Yes.
KD CASEY: -to be thematic. But I think that that is one of those places where I'm seeing again, it's every victory has to be celebrated because it's inherently incremental. But you're sort of seeing like an inching forward of progress for a bunch of people working really hard collectively. And I think that that, to me, is really just like, I don't know, heartwarming is kind of stunning. It's, it's nice. I like it.
AMANDA: Yeah.
KD CASEY: I like seeing it. I like how many people can come together and really affect change. I think there are romance books that certainly do that sort of thing well. I'm not sure if it's in my wheelhouse as a writer to show it. But I think that that is one of those optimistic things in romance novels that a lot of a lot of times it is that sort of like you're left with that, that inching forward of in this very specific time and place, these characters have accomplished something to make their world and the world around them a little bit better than it was, even if it's not just burn the whole thing down, if we wanted to I think.
JULIA: It wouldn't be so bad.
AMANDA: So beautiful. I'm trying to think of a good [55:10] joke. I can't quite come to it.
KD CASEY: Well, so I always pick on the the sort of like the you're not obligated to finish the work, but you are obligated to undertake it sort of from [55:20] this is like a teachings of the rabbis. You know, sort of like document if f olks are not familiar with it. The next line on that one is always you are obligated to pay your fucking workers. And so like there's a lot of like, okay, yeah, absolutely. You're obligated to undertake work and pay your fucking workers. So I maybe yell at that, at that point, Twitter sometimes Jewishly.
AMANDA: Yeah, I think the real spirit of baseball is union halls in cities. That feels about right.
KD CASEY: Yep. I would love to see some union baseball teams. I mean, the MLB is unionized. But I would love to see like a [55:56] have its own baseball teamm would be cool.
AMANDA: I could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much for taking the time. Can you please let our listeners know where they can dive into your work and follow you online?
KD CASEY: Sure. I am @KDCaseyWrites on all platforms, so Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, that's my website and my email at Gmail. So please come hang out. I love to talk about baseball. I love to talk about smooching. You know, I think that there's there's a lot of folks who you will find community with if you enjoy a baseball and smooching. So yeah, come hang out.
JULIA: Awesome. Thank you so much, KD, and whether you are in the middle of an Iowa field or in a metro area trying to play in an alley.
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
[outro]
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!
Transcriptionist: KM