A Portrait of the Baseball Writer as a Young Man

Hello NotGraphs. I realize this is a break from your regularly scheduled dose of me. Please try not panic. I come to you today with an urgent purpose. And that is for you to see a video.

But before that happens, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a 13 year-old boy on the cusp of manhood who loved three things: Prodigy Communications Corporation, Baseball, and The Mickey Mouse Club. That young man wrote a letter (a proto-email) to one of the comely young lasses who graced said Mouse Club, virtually daring her to find him. And find him she did, in the most wonderful and awkward fashion possible.

That young man was and is lawyer, baseball writer, my dear friend, and hetero-sexual life partner, Bill Parker, of The Platoon Advantage and SBNation, amongst other fine places. And this, dear friends, is the video that I promised would remain unpublicized until the day he was ready to face that dark chapter of his life publicly. But with Bill finally baring his soul before God and his almost (but not quite) 3000 followers, today is, finally, the best day of my life. Also, of note, he wears a Cubs hat, so this is totally baseball-related.

Please, enjoy this as much as I have:

*thanks to Internet scallawag David Temple for the .gif’age above