Hey Reader,

The College World Series is where the best teams in college baseball fight it out for the national title. Double elimination. High stakes. Every pitch counts.

This week, Gage Wood—a junior pitcher from my hometown Batesville, Arkansas—threw a complete-game shutout to keep the Razorbacks alive in the tournament after an early loss. Coming from the loser’s bracket means a team needs four straight wins to stay in it. This was win one.

And it wasn’t just a win—it was history. Gage struck out 19 batters, on 119 pitches. The only blemish on his outing—bottom of the 8th inning he grazed the back foot of a left-handed Murray State Racer to break up what would have been a perfect game. Instead, Gage completed the first no-hitter in a Men’s College World Series since 1960.

Real-Life Moments

You don’t hafta be a baseball fan to appreciate the momentous and rare performance from that kid.

After that final strikeout, Gage came off the mound screaming ARKANSAS over and over. Not to say look at me—but to say look at Arkansas!

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I can’t stop playing this clip over and over again, and I cry every time I watch.

All the hometown feels

I was born in Batesville, Arkansas. A whole bunch of my family is still there. And I knew the whole town of about 12,000 people had been losing its mind ahead of Gage’s start.

It feels wrong to call Batesville my hometown since we moved away within a couple of weeks of my fourth birthday.

Even so, it's hard to forget the hot, humid summer nights.

What if "give til it hurts" is a real thing?

This was the mid-60s—air conditioning was rare, and even if you had a window unit, you’d sweat the electric bill at the end of the month.

So we did what everybody else did—we sat outside in lawn chairs and fanned ourselves and each other until it cooled down enough to sleep.

Our little house might’ve been 800 square feet, maybe less. I slept in the second bedroom that doubled as my daddy’s office. The neighborhood was tiny—one of those places where you didn’t need a phone tree or a party line to organize anything. You just hollered.

And that’s all it took to get ice cream night underway.

Somewhere close to dusk, just before dark settled in, we’d hear Sylvia from the end of our street yell, “I’ve got milk!”

Then Dixie—my best friend Nancy’s mom—would holler back from across the street, “I’ve got sugar!”

And right on cue, my mom would run past me shouting over her shoulder, “I’ll get the eggs!”

The men would grab cold beers and the ice cream buckets. Somebody would gather up all the ice in the neighborhood, with a big box of rock salt. And it wouldn’t take long before our dads were muscling the crank on the machine, adding ice and salt so the liquid would freeze. Just right.

Ice cream was coming. Right there in the yard, in the thick of the Arkansas heat.

The kids ran wild—barefoot and in our pajamas, chasing fireflies, sneaking licks off the salt rim, and maybe even a sip of beer if you were lucky or fast.

Whatever bath we’d taken earlier was long undone by sweat and melted vanilla ice cream, dripping down our chins and knees as we ran until we couldn’t move another muscle.

Why am I sharing a nearly 60-year-old story?

Every family brought an essential ingredient. And in doing so, they went without for a while.

If you contributed eggs to the ice cream party, you didn’t have eggs again until payday. If you gave the milk or the sugar, same thing.

And it was okay. Because we did more than make do. We made memories. Not quite 60 years later, I still hear the laughter and excitement.

The Omaha Connection

So when Gage Wood came skipping off that mound—yelling ARKANSAS over and over—I didn’t just see a baseball player. I saw every neighbor on that street, back in the mid 1960s.

I understood exactly why he screamed it. Have I mentioned I’ve watched that moment over and over?

After the game, Gage was asked what the no-hitter meant to him.

Gage Wood said:
I get to put on this Arkansas uniform again tomorrow.

The kid is about to make a lot of money. Come the middle of July, he’ll be a first round pick in Major League Baseball’s draft.

But he wants to wear Arkansas across his chest. Three Two more times in Omaha as of Wednesday morning as I write.

You don’t need to explain a moment like that to an Arkansan. We already know.

—Tracy

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P. S. I think this is why I love historical fiction so much. We see the arc of a story through time. Somehow, the moments in life that seem impossible are survivable, because we have a glimpse of what this moment looks like in 40 years, where there's an opportunity for redemption.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about if or how a specific genre impacts how you respond when life gets difficult. Reply and let me know.

What are you reading this week?

Despite watching lots of baseball, I've been reading a lot.

Finished:

​The Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy | My Rating: 5/5

​Carrie Soto is Back, Taylor Jenkins Reid | My Rating: 5/5

​The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman, and Suspicion, Friedrich Durrenmatt | My Rating: 5/5

​Nightshade, Michael Connelly | My Rating: 4/5

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