Last spring, I interviewed Will Leitch for the now-defunct GHOST magazine. My friend from college was the editor and worked with Leitch at New York Magazine; she casually asked me if I’d want to talk to him.

We ended up emailing back and forth, and he answered every dumb question I sent him. He was every bit as nice (at least in email correspondence) as you always hear, and I think his answers seem pretty thoughtful.

This isn’t the final version — in fact, since GHOST was print-only, I never actually saw the final version — but it’s what I submitted.

If you’re familiar with Will Leitch, the idea of an interview with him may seem
unnecessary. As he points out on the description of his Tumblr feed, between his Twitter
page, blog posts on New York magazine’s Sports Section, magazine pieces, books, and
regular guest posts to the ubiquitous sports website he used to edit, Deadspin, the world
has plenty of access to Leitch’s thoughts.

But that doesn’t make him any less interesting. Plucked from the small-town middle
America brambles of Mattoon, Illinois, Leitch ascended to some level of fame via a
series of gigs online, including the now-defunct website The Black Table, until he landed
at Deadspin, led by a distinct writing style that combined an odd use of the royal we, a
fondness for commas, and an open distaste for much of the mainstream sports media.

Last year, Leitch stepped away from Deadspin to take his current job at New York
magazine. This surprised some, considering Leitch’s influence online, and the esteem (or
lack thereof) to which he was held in the mainstream media. The story of his appearance
on Costas Now, in which he was lambasted by Friday Night Lights writer Buzz Bissinger
essentially for the comments other people made on Leitch’s posts, increased Leitch’s Q
rating. More casual sports fans became familiar with him, and his fans online stumped for
him even more, rallying behind his crusade for open conversation and exposition of what
they considered to be the stale traditional media, while laying into Bissinger, who played
the role of foil to perfection.

Leitch’s move, then, was decidedly more mainstream, but it allowed him to escape the
clutches of the blogosphere’s soon-to-be tired fascination with itself and focus just on
writing. Despite his work on The Sports Section, the bulk of his energy now is devoted
to his longer-form pieces. In addition to his regular articles for the magazine, he recently
wrote the book Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball,
released May 4. As he said to us, “I find that I use blogging as almost a wake-up, wipe-the-sleep-out-of-my-eyes
exercise to get me in the mindset I need to be in for more longer-form stuff, whether it’s a
book or a magazine story.”

While the title and subject of the book may sound hacky – we can easily picture Mike
Lupica somewhere throwing a hissyfit that it is a ripoff of Summer of ’98, undoubtedly
without having read it – it contains what we’ve become accustomed to from Leitch:
humor, sports, and a little more humanity than most of his snark-infused blog brethren
often provide.

We sat down with Leitch to talk about the book, writing, and all kinds of ephemera,
from Rick Ankiel and Roger Ebert to technology and movies. Who are we kidding – we
emailed him a bunch of questions and he was kind enough to respond. We also appear to
have stolen his writing device.

GHOST magazine: How has your experience as a sports fan over the course of your
life changed? I’m thinking along the lines of: A lot of people note that they care

less as they get older due to perspective, but the technological advances allow us to
consume so much that some find it better.

Will Leitch: I think you’re right on both accounts. I find myself caring about my
individual teams more – the Cardinals (St. Louis and Arizona), the Illini – and big events
a little less. I loved the NCAA tournament, but I didn’t move everything in my schedule
around so I could spend two days in front of 10 screens at a sports bar like I used to.
Here, those technological advances come in handy: I can sit at my computer and work
and write like I always do, and then check in on games as they go along. The rise in the
ability to turn my computer into a sports bar coincides nicely with my inability to shake
off hangovers as well as I once did.

GHOST: Is there anything you’ve written that you’ve regretted?

WL: I’d say there are two. One, I wrote about recently, the Roger Ebert piece on
Deadspin, which detailed the unfortunate and cruel piece I wrote about Ebert back in 2000. (I’m pleased to report that he accepted my apology, not that I necessarily deserved it.) The other was factual: Back when I was running Deadspin, I reported something on Albert Pujols (of all people!) that was not true and later had to issue a
contrite correction. I regret that one like any journalist would regret a factual error when you’re burned by a source: It’s the worst. It happens when you make a mistake trusting a source. That’s still no excuse.

GHOST: What is your favorite thing about movies?

WL: When you walk into a theater and the lights go down, everything about you
and your life melts away for a couple of hours. I fell in love with the movies when
I saw “JFK” – a movie that has not aged well, though it’s still quite the technical
achievement – at the age of 16, in 1991, at the Mattoon Cinema 1-2-3. Three hours into
the movie, the film spool broke and the film stopped playing. It was like being woken up
in the middle of the night with a bucket of ice poured over your head while a tuba played
in your ear. I was hooked. I’ve been trying to recapture that experience ever since.

GHOST: What was the hardest thing about your 20s?

WL: Trying to figure out who I was while interacting with people who, quite reasonably,
might have assumed I already had some idea. I was careless a lot because I was searching
for some notion of what kind of adult I was. I hope this is normal. The worst part about
my 30s is realizing how thoughtless I often was in my 20s.

GHOST: Have you bought any Rick Ankiel Royals paraphernalia?

WL: I have an Ankiel 24 t-shirt jersey I wear to the gym, yes. I had an “Ankiel 66” authentic jersey for so long, so I figure the downgrade is appropriate. If he signs with someone else next year, I’ll buy another one, because I’m a stalker, apparently.

GHOST: You write in a variety of media now – how has your writing changed by
working on both immediate sorts of formats (like blogging) while also writing more
long-form (like books)?

WL: I used to believe it was the same thing, but it’s absolutely not. There are certain
obvious differences – the level of editing, the brutal, masochistic lack of a deadline – but
honestly, I find that I use blogging as almost a wake-up, wipe-the-sleep-out-of-my-eyes
exercise to get me in the mindset I need to be in for more longer-form stuff, whether it’s a
book or a magazine story. That’s not to devalue either one: I’m fairly certain more people
will end up reading one of the baseball previews on Deadspin than will read the book. But I’ve realized they stretch different muscles. I do believe the voice is ultimately the same in both venues.

GHOST: Does the relationship between the author and the reader – in the most
simple characterization, that the lines are a little more blurred and things are more
interactive – affect the way you write? Is the way that readers address you or other
bloggers/writers write about you surprising?

WL: I think it’s great, and it’s a shame writing hasn’t always been like this. When I met
with Bob Costas before that infamous Costas Now appearance, he couldn’t understand
where all these people responding online to things he did came from. I told him they’d
always been there; it’s just that he can hear them now. I think any writer has to make the
decision about how interactive they want to be. If you write something, if you put your
name out there, without question a large number of people are going to hate it and tell
you so. If this really bothers you all that much, you probably should have looked into a
different profession. I feel confident in my work, confident enough to be able to slough
off the more fevered criticism, but you’d be a fool not to listen to what people are saying.
The work is only yours until someone reads it. Then it doesn’t belong to you anymore.

GHOST: Who were your biggest inspirations as a writer growing up (and now)?

WL: Roger Ebert was the biggest one, and remains so. The man has perfected the art of
writing like you are talking with your audience, not to them. I’ll never be as good as he
is. Others: Woody Allen, Ben Bridwell, Michael Chabon, Kurt Cobain, Dave Eggers,
Chuck Klosterman, Jonathan Lethem, Dan Jenkins, Sally Jenkins, Chris Jones, Pat
Jordan, Tom Junod, Michael Kinsley, Flanner O’Connor, Susan Orlean, Tom Perrotta,
Charlie Pierce, Scott Raab, David Thomson, David Foster Wallace, Lawrence Wright,
countless others.

GHOST: What was your best experience meeting/interviewing someone?

WL: Meeting: I went to go see Woody Allen’s band play at the Carlyle Café in
Manhattan and sat next to Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite. Interviewing: I talked to Whitey Herzog for an hour while in college. My father has never been prouder of me.

GHOST: Do you anticipate writing any fiction in the future?

WL: If they will let me, I will. I’ve written an old novel about a disgraced journalist that
I’m hoping to rework and do something with someday. I’m not sure there are a ton of
people counting the minutes until I head back into fiction, though. “Catch” was a great
experience, perhaps the most fun I’ve had writing a book, but I think five, maybe six
people read it.

GHOST: What was the last song that came up on your iPod?

WL: It’s on Shuffle right now. I’ll give you the last five:

“Vein Of Stars,” Flaming Lips
“Welcome To The Terrordome,” Public Enemy
“Bury Me With It,” Modest Mouse
“Overtime,” Lucinda Williams
“If I Needed Someone,” The Beatles

GHOST: Long-winded question: In the past, writers would develop in relative
obscurity before acquiring an audience and in the process develop their voice. Now
many people are accessible early in their careers and develop in front of the world’s
eyes, while also easily co-opting others’ styles in blog posts (just by copying and
pasting to quote other blogs). How did you develop your voice as a writer? Do you
find it more difficult now than you imagine it being in another time? Easier?

WL: I think it was easier. I was able to tell what worked and what didn’t, and merge that
with my own voice and inspiration. I think there’s a certain arrogance that develops if
you don’t have people telling you you’re an asshole all the time; you start to think you’re
better than you actually are, that you have less work ahead of you than you actually do.
I know you can just throw anything up online, but if you want to get better and be taken
seriously, you have to think about everything you write, because there are fewer filters
and more people who will call you out if you’re being lazy or flip. I hope that it has made
me better and more thoughtful. If it hasn’t, I’m sure people will let me know.

GHOST: What recent technological advancement have you liked the least?

WL: That corporations have learned they can maximize their advertising dollars online
by making me sit through 15 seconds of whatever hacky product they’re offering just so I
can watch a 20-second clip from “Parks and Recreation.” (Note: If my book is the hacky
product they’re offering, I take all this back.)

GHOST: If you weren’t a writer, what do you think you’d be?

WL: Probably working at a factory in Mattoon, doing a terrible, and potentially dangerous to co-workers, job. I never really had a backup plan. Ultimate irony: Blogging actually kept me out of my mother’s basement.

GHOST: What is your favorite place to visit (other than Mattoon)?

WL: You’d have a hard time convincing me that Kauai, Hawaii isn’t what Allah had in
mind when he created the universe. That place will fix your soul in 24 hours. Plus, the
night baseball games start at, like, noon.

GHOST: Now that some time has passed, how do you think the transition from you
to AJ Daulerio has gone at Deadspin?

WL: I think AJ has done an amazing job under extremely difficult circumstances.
I’m pretty firm in the belief that had I stayed as editor of the site, it would have been
sold, Idolator-style. I just wouldn’t have generated enough traffic for Gawker. AJ has
restrictions and demands from above that I would have never been able to survive under.
That he has not only made it through, but thrived, is a staggering achievement. (For the
record, you won’t find [Nick Denton, Gawker editor-in-chief]-bashing coming from me.
That guy is smarter than the rest of us, and, as much as he’d hate hearing me say this, a
much, much nicer guy than anyone believes.) Sure, there are tons of stories on there that
I wouldn’t have run when I was editor, but that certainly doesn’t mean that AJ’s wrong to
run them. And he’s breaking stories in a way that I never would have been able to. When
you combine that with [senior editor Tommy Craggs] and [contributing editor Drew
Magary] (who are both uniquely terrific in entirely different ways) and [contributing
editors Dashiell Bennett and Barry Petchesky] and everyone … well, I’m just impressed.
Are there times when I look at the site and groan? Of course. But a lot more often, I’m
envious of the talent on the roster over there, and hopeful that no one notices that I
wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.

GHOST: What’s the biggest difference between working at New York magazine
versus Deadspin?

WL: At Deadspin, I sat at a desk and typed for 10 hours every day. It was fulfilling and
great, but I knew if I wasn’t careful, I would have developed some bad habits. At New
York, I have the best editors at one of the best magazines in the world telling me when
I’m doing something wrong, and helping me fix it. My main goal at New York has been
to shut up and watch the smart people do what smart people do. I’m incredibly fortunate
to have the opportunity.

GHOST: Tell us about the process for your upcoming book – what’s it about, what
caused you to write it, who’s it for?

WL: It’s about fatherhood and baseball, and how they’re connected. It’s about one
baseball game at Wrigley Field with my father and an old friend from college (a Cubs
fan), and how each half inning can stand in for something larger in baseball and the world
at large. I also hope it is funny. It’s about dads, though, mine and all of them. Well, all the good ones.

GHOST: What was the hardest part of the book to write?

WL: Anything involving baseball statistics. If you get one thing wrong, you will hear
about it, and justifiably so. It’s also difficult to write about my father if I sense there’s
any chance he’ll read it. Hopefully, no one will give this to him. I’m not sure he’s read
any of the other books, so perhaps we’ll slip this one past the goalie as well.

Actually, the hardest part of any book to write is the acknowledgments. That’s an easy
one.

GHOST: What was the easiest part of the book to write?

WL: The dedication. It’s short.

GHOST: What was the best feedback/advice you got in the process of writing it?

WL: Don’t try to do everything. Because I’m writing about such big things – baseball!
Fatherhood! Earth! – I originally tried to make it this huge epic tome that covered
everything. As much as I enjoyed Simmons’ book (mostly), I think that’s awfully
exhausting to the reader. I pared a bunch down and out. I think it’s better that way.

GHOST: Did you learn anything in the process of writing it?

WL: I found out, during a late night phone call with my father, that he made the
American Legion baseball team in high school, a team I tried desperately to make when I
was in high school but failed to. He had held it from me for years so as not to upset me. I
was still upset.

GHOST: How do you view the future of the book business?

WL: Oh, heavens, I’m the wrong person to ask: I’ll need to sell more books to feel
comfortable tackling that one. I do hope it’s not all on the Kindle or the iPad, though. I
kind of like carrying a book around with me. That’s not that crazy, is it?