Hey Reader,

I have a secret for when reading starts to feel like work again.

I'm bananas over the Savannah Bananas' arch rival, the Party Animals.

Yeah, yeah. What does baseball have to do with books? Stay with me.

Last week I ugly-cried over the Savannah Bananas' season recap, and the new teams coming into the league next season. Not because of the baseball, but because of what I saw in the video recap: 2.2 million people choosing joy over cynicism. Fans singing Yellow with their phone lights up. Kids leading the warm-ups while adults copy their moves. Strangers laughing together.

When I forget why I read, I watch when people choose play over performance.

Banana Ball players are legitimately talented. But they're also willing to look ridiculous—pitching from stilts, riding unicycles to home plate, dancing down the dugout steps in full catcher gear. They stopped treating baseball like a transaction and turned it back into a game.

That's exactly what I did with reading.

I used to treat books like résumé lines. Self-improvement only. Fiction felt like a waste of time. I'd finish a novel and immediately wonder: What did I learn? How am I better?

The Banana Ball players showed me something I'd forgotten: The “point” isn't always the point.

They play to win, sure. But mostly they play because baseball—when you strip away the performance anxiety—is just flat-out fun.

Same with reading.

You don't have to justify the thriller you read in two days. You don't owe anyone a Goodreads review. You don't need to extract lessons from every chapter. You don’t need a note-taking system.

Sometimes a book is just the literary equivalent of a pitcher on stilts—absurd, delightful, and exactly what you needed.

Next time reading feels like another checkbox, go watch people choose joy in their thing. Banana Ball works for me. Maybe for you it's watching someone paint, or listening to jazz musicians mess around, or watching cooking videos where nobody's trying to go viral.

Then come back to your book and ask: What if I just... enjoyed this?

No notes. No highlights. No guilt.

Just you and the story.

What helps you remember why you started reading in the first place? Write back and let me know!

Tracy

P.S. Jesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas, has written three books. I’ve read Fans First and

Banana Ball, and Find Your Yellow Tux is in my queue. One of them might be the fun read you need!

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