Writing Boots

I grew up in Ohio, watching TV shows like Little House on the Prairie and Eight Is Enough.

And so, even after all these years living on the mean streets of Chicago, I’m still inclined to attribute unhappy facts of life to misunderstandings and unintended consequences—rather than stark-raving naked power grabs and purely greedy money plays.

I think this is a good quality of mine, that often gets me hurt, or embarrassed.

To wit: As I’ve contemplated the put-your-hand-on-a-hot-stove-and-think-it’s-a-flower-crazy world of youth sports for the purposes of writing and discussing my new book Soccer Dad, I’ve been inclined to explain the situation as a kind of blameless accident: Lotta ex-athletes want to stay close to the scene of their sports dreams, and must sustain themselves by coaching. That need dovetails with enough parents so ambitious for their athlete kids that they’ll pay more money than they should for full-time coaches, and all the games and leagues and travel required to justify the arrangement.

In short, lots of well-meaning grown-ups inadvertently making a mess of things. A Winchester Mystery House kind of story.

It’s good for my soul to think this way. What’s more, it allows me to hope that, if all these nice folks just came to their senses, we could somehow find our way back to knothole baseball, and live happily ever after.

But then, last Friday evening, still checking LinkedIn in the sick reflexive twitching of a dead animal, I ran across this post:

Daniel “Nothing Is Ever” Renouf goes on to write,

My dad was an electrician for the City of Toronto.
My mom ran a small daycare out of our house.

They weren’t wealthy buy any means.
But they made it work.

Early morning practices.
Travel tournaments every weekend.
Equipment that needed replacing every year.

Gas money.
Hotel rooms.
Entry fees.

None of it was cheap.
But they never hesitated.

They treated it like necessary spending.
Because to them, it was.
And it paid off.

That investment landed me in the NHL.
It’s why I’m still playing pro hockey today.
I owe everything to what they sacrificed for me.

So when I look at youth sports as an investment…
I’m not looking at a spreadsheet.
I’m looking at millions of families doing exactly what mine did.

Betting on their kid.
Treating it like it’s non-negotiable.
Showing up year over year.

That’s not casual spending.
That’s conviction.
And conviction is defensible.

If you’re looking at alternative investments…
Youth sports is hiding in plain sight.

If you’re interested in youth sports as an asset class, shoot me a DM.
Happy to share what I’ve been learning!

The downside of my soft Midwestern heart is that it’s easily bruised. And when it gets bruised, I get mad.

Finding only enthusiastic comments and reposts in response to Renouf—”when discretionary spend behaves like essential spend, that’s where durable businesses get built”—and not having yet ascertained that Renouf has been a fairly marginal NHL player and is currently playing on a one-year contract with a team in Germany, I wrote:

Your parents bet on you. They won. So it follows that “millions” of parents should be organizing their whole lives around preposterously elaborate sports schedules and betting their family vacations on their kids, only the tiniest percentage of whom will pay back that investment?

Clearly, you’re trying to appeal here to investors who need foolproof asset classes. Crypto, online gambling … family dreams. (You must be seeking capital. Did you not make enough on the bet your parents won?)

But do you think what youth sports and families need is more cold-eyed investors drooling over parents’ ever-increasing spending on youth sports as something to get rich on?

Some people say the quiet part out loud. You’ve said the shameful part, real proud.

The only commenter who agreed with me was Linda Flanagan, who wrote the currently definitive critique of youth sports foolishness called Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports—and Why It Matters.

Wrote Flanagan (who has endorsed Soccer Dad, BTW):

Incidentally, 79% of parents think youth sports cost too much, and 25% draw from their savings to pay for their children’s games, according the NY Life Wealth Watch Survey from last year. 80% want less travel, 72% want fewer games, 73% say youth sports have lost sight of their greater purpose, this from the Aspen Institute’s 2025 Project Play survey. Of course parents can and should make sacrifices for their children. But let’s not pretend this is all working out great. Oh, almost forgot: our system has created an epidemic of overuse injuries among players.

And five days after this Friday night fusillade from two youth sports parenting writers? Not a word of response, from Renouf, or any of his sanguine supporters, whose silence only repeats the message that Renouf’s post communicated in the first place: We don’t give a shit about kids, or parents. We want their money.

And the scales fall, once more, from my ever-innocent Ohio eyes.

11:39

Anyway, pre-order Soccer Dad now!

10/23

Spanberger’s Democratic Response is one of the better ones in memory. Of course, none of us can hold any more than like three in memory. The super weird Republican woman, the sickly looking guy in the mansion and the one where Rubio got dry-mouth real bad.

Well, Spanberger killed those folks.

10:57

Here comes the speechwriting. “Daunting and dangerous.” “From empty marshes and wide-open plains.” “America lifted humanity into the skies with aluminum and steel.” “No horizon too distant to claim.” “From the rugged border towns of Texas … From the sun-kissed shores of Florida …. More beautiful than ever before.” Guys, that doesn’t work at this point. For one thing, there’s blood everywhere.

10:54

VWSP: “Seriously, hasn’t anyone ever told Trump that if everyone is special, no one is?”

10:49

Sorry folks, this whole spectacle is just fucked. It’s not rhetoric. It’s not even quite propaganda. Whatever it is, I don’t know anything more about it than you do. Next year, you get high and do this, and I’ll sit back and see what you have to say. (And also get high.)

10:46

“Shredding his legs into numerous pieces … gushing blood, blowing back down the aisle.” Easy hoss, we’re tryin’ to eat.

10:40

VWSP: “he’s said ‘no one has seen anything like it’ so many times that ‘no one has seen anything like it'”

10:37

No, he’s not.

10:34

Ninety-three minutes in, he’s telling us why we might be going to war.

10:25

Goriest SOTU ever. American carnage.

10:22

A Facebook direct message: “A neurodivergent, drug-free speechwriter thanks you for your service.”

10:19

This speech has more Skutniks than Romania.

10:18

Chicago journalist/communicator friend posts on Facebook: “I’m going to need a bath after listening to his speech. The racism. The hatred. The scapegoating. Ignore the real problems Trump is causing you. Blame immigrants. Ignore all the numbers that show immigrants – documented and un- – commit far fewer crimes than native-born Americans. How far we have fallen.”

10:15

Well. I guess he couldn’t resist, after all.

10:12

Me, to Veteran Washington speechwriter pal: “This speech is dulling my senses. I had to smoke grass sharpen up.”

10:07

9:58

My mind is wandering. What is this feeling? Sadness and boredom. Muhammad Ali said the shortest speech is, “Me, we.”

Trump’s is shorter: “Ennui.”

9:57

In 2016, Politico asked Lenny Skutnik how he felt about Trump. “I have no clue yet, but Trump is saying things … there’s nobody backing him. He’s paying his own way. He’s saying what a lot of people are thinking. To the left, he’s nuts. They attack him. But he’s gaining ground. He could be the nominee. I don’t make my decision until I go to the polls.”

9:52

Mike Johnson thought that little crack about a third term was wicked frickin’ hilarious.

9:49

Trump-friendlier friends, what am I missing that Trump might even think he is achieving with any of this—either persuading opponents or even galvanizing friends.

9:45

Are the hockey guys still in the room? Cuz this must be a hell of a come-down after the last few days they’ve had. I worry about DTs. DJTs.

9:43

Michael Dell has said he’s excited about the Trump accounts because it’ll make little kids excited about compound interest. Which makes me excited, that maybe one of the little buggers will tell me what it is.

9:39

I like Megan. Megan seems to get it.

9:35

A great speechwriting teacher of yore, Jerry Tarver, used to talk about a speaker who was “so pompous, when he said good morning, it seemed like he was taking credit for it!” I wonder why I think of old Jerry just now.

9:24

Wow, did these dumb lads let themselves get taken for a ride. Is there not one of them who feels reluctant about this, and used? Wash this down with Miracle, on Netflix. VWSP: “Congrats—from Gold medal to prop in 48 hours.” Another VWSP (VWSP2): “Jack Hughes didn’t even have time to replace his tooth.” VWSP: “Pucknicks!”

9:20

It’s possible this won’t turn out to be the most objective account of the speech. Which is a shame, because this is how most Americans experience the State of the Union. (But actually, I’ve heard from two people who can only bring themselves to read this.)

9:19

What exactly was “wonderful” about Fred Trump? The guy is so mean he’s mad his son called him old, decades after he’s been dead!

9:16

“A turnaround for the ages.” That lands like a pipe wrench on a shin bone.

9:10

If this is the Republicans distancing themselves from Trump, I’d hate to see what desperate grab-ass looks like.

9:05

Finally, something that rhymes with Skutnik!

9:00

Tulsi Gabbard is going for the “nun” look. I’d lose that hairdo like a bad habit.

8:56

Veteran Washington speechwriter pal (VWSP) texts me: “This is so screwed up. Every [CNN] question begins with a version of, ‘Do you think the President will be able to resist ….'” And Jake Twerper says, “That’s why we have to watch!” You might hear more from VWSP tonight.

8:47

No one is less interested in who “has the pen” than I am, especially with Trump, who doesn’t exactly tickle the rhetorical ivories with his oratory. Who cares who handed the carpenter the hammer? But I am amazed that Haley and Worthington have been at it this long with Trump—possibly a record for any speechwriters to serve this long with any president, actually, especially any pair of them. Usually they burn out, or run out of gas or use their White House credentials to get lucrative opportunities outside the White House. Not these lads.

8:34

First-term Trump White House veteran Vincent Haley wrote some of the speech too, according to Politico.

Worthington, who leads Trump’s speechwriting operation, is the chief architect and primary author of the address. And Haley, director of the Domestic Policy Council, has played a central role in advising on the policy sections—particularly the new policy announcements that Trump is expected to roll out tonight.

8:30

My least favorite CNN commentator Scott Jennings is calling for Trump to maybe announce why we have sent the Spanish Armada to Iran.

8:18

What in the Markwayne is Mullin holding in his hands right now?

8:15

According to CNN, longtime White House director of speechwriting Ross Worthington “has the pen” on this speech, as speechwriters like to say. Worthington and company have been trying to cut the speech down from the original two hours. Length is often a problem with State of the Union Addresses, but for different reasons than it is with this one. Usually, these speeches get bloated by people in various government departments trying to get their key messages mentioned in the speech. There may be some of that, but most of this is Trump wanting to get all of his own key messages into it.

“I don’t fill empty vessels,” I heard James Carville say once, about his job helping communicate digestibly and thus memorably. “I empty full vessels!”

8:08 ET

On CNN earlier, Jake Tapper is telling the lay audiences about “Skutniks.”

See, this is why nobody likes Jake Tapper. He’s a twerp who loves nothing more than to take away what little leverage speechwriters have against the powerful windbags they serve, by telling everybody about our secret jargon!

(Since President Reagan invited Lenny Skutnik to the State of the Union after he saved some lives in a January plane crash in the Potomac River, all the called-out guests in the audience have been called “Skutniks.”)

Tapper ran out of time, or he probably would have also told his bovine lay audience what a “howdahell” is, and brought them up to speed on Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.

Speaking of definitions, Kurt Vonnegut defined a “twerp” as “a guy who put his set of false teeth up his rear end and bit the buttons off the backseats of taxicabs.”

***

I’m going to try to watch and live-blog the State of the Union address tonight without drugs, but President Trump already said, “It’s going to be a long speech, because we have so much to talk about.”

(Reminding me of onetime Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who interrupted himself during a 6,200-word oration by saying, “And on that I’m going to ask people serve lunch, because I’ve got a lot to get through here. I’ve got a lot to share. So bring on the lunch: enjoy.”)

So, no promises.

This morning I reminded my wife about the SOTU tonight and she said, “I don’t know if I can do it.”

I reminded her that she has said that exact thing maybe 25 out of the 30-ish State of the Union speeches our marriage has endured. I reminded her that I did not begrudge her this instinct and further noted that I only watch for professional reasons and even those are dubious. I think the back door closed somewhere in the middle of that.

During the day, I polled some professional speechwriters, about whether they were going to watch. “Go with God man,” wrote longtime higher education speechwriter Mike Field. “You couldn’t pay me enough.” Independent speechwriter Justine Adelizzi answered even more succinctly. “Absolutely not, I like myself.”

In any case: Speech starts at 9:00 EST tonight. I’ll be on here around 8:00.