The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Making It Home: Life Lessons from a Season of Little League by Teresa Strasser

Episode Date: May 14, 2023

Making It Home: Life Lessons from a Season of Little League by Teresa Strasser https://amzn.to/3nXnSJE An achingly heartfelt and surprisingly funny memoir about family, grief, and moving forward by an award-winning writer and TV personality. When her brother dies from cancer, and then her mother just four months later, Teresa Strasser has no one to mourn with but her irresponsible, cantankerous, trailerpark-dwelling father. He claims not to remember her chaotic childhood, but he’s a devoted grandpa, so as her son embarks on his first season pitching in Little League, Teresa and Nelson form a grief group of two in beach chairs lined up behind the first base line. There are no therapeutically trained facilitators and no rules other than those dictated by the Little League of America, and the human heart. For Teresa and her father, the stages of grief are the draft, the regular season, and the playoffs. One season of baseball becomes the framework for a memoir about family, loss, and the fundamentals of baseball and life. They cheer, talk smack about other teams, scream at each other in the parking lot, and care way too much about Little League. Making It Home is a bracingly honest journey through grief, self-doubt, and anxiety armed with humor and optimism. After all, America’s pastime may be just a game, but it always leaves room for redemption, even at the bottom of the lineup.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Alex Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, the big thing in the sky. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome.

We certainly appreciate you guys coming by today and spending time with us as always. 14 years we're going on in August. It's approaching, the big thing, 1,400 episodes of The Chris Foss Show. And we're now pumping out two to three podcasts a day. And if that's not enough for you people, what more the hell do I have to do to get you to ask your friends, neighbors, relatives, and people to subscribe to the Chris Voss show? Like seriously, do it, do it. I sit at home and I read your guys' comments and different references you provide on iTunes to the show. And I really appreciate it because you guys get me

and all that good stuff. It wasn't for you for you well i'd just be sitting here talking in a mic one night but i do it because i love it we have the most brilliant people on the show uh today we have an amazing author on the show multi-book author i should say and we'll be talking to her in the meantime for the show to your friends at goodreads.com fortress christmas youtube.com fortress christmas they're over we're on around that tiktok now with those kids trying to be cool and uh also check out linkedin our big linkedin group linkedin newsletter she is with us today the author of the latest book that's coming out june 6th 2023 making a home life lessons from a season of little league theresa strasser joins us on the

show today she'll be talking to us about her latest work and talking to us about all the good stuff that went into it. And we're going to learn so much about her. Teresa Strasser is an Emmy winning writer, an Emmy nominated television host. She was on Win Ben Stein's Money. I remember that show. That was a great show. TLC's While You you were out radio and podcast

audiences no hair is the co-host on the adam carolla show adam carolla always funny i bumped into him one time outside a restaurant i should have gotten a picture with him his first he was with a woman i was like i don't want to bother dudes he's you know he's i think he was with his wife um her first book exploiting my baby because Baby Because It's Exploiting Me, was published in January 2011 by Now and, uh, to excellent reviews and became a Los Angeles Times bestseller. The book was auctioned by Sony Pictures Television and developed into a pilot for ABC written by Teresa and Jamie Tarsus' Fanfare Productions. As a journalist, Strasser is a contributor to the Los Angeles Times and a columnist for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. Her first person essays have garnered three Los Angeles Press Club Awards, including columnist of the year, and she blogs for HuffPost

Comedy and HuffPost Parents. And when you know she's here in the flesh, welcome to the show, Teresa. How are you? Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. A little nervous. We were talking before the show. This is my very first podcast to promote this book, Making It Home. There you go. Well, we're honored to have you. It's excellent to have you. Give us a dot coms wherever you want people to find you on the interweb, which is in the sky. You can find me at Teresa Strasser. That's my handle everywhere. T-E-R-e-s-a-s-t-r-a-s-s-e-r on facebook on instagram instagram and twitter there you go and we already got some love coming in always love her when she's on the adam carolla show so there you go you should have asked adam

to take a picture he is so gracious he will take a picture with a hundred fans i'm telling you he would never have turned you down. I didn't know if he was married or not at the time. And he was doing the man show, I think, at the time. And, you know, you don't want to cock block another guy. I understand. You know, you're like, hey, man, he's out with the chick. You know, you don't want to be, I don't know, whatever.

But he's done a great job at laying a great foundation of Billionaire Fog. Brilliant podcast. In fact, I don't think many of us would be here without him uh i remember when he was on the radio and he uh i think he fired or quit or they just ran out of money or whatever the hell the deal was it was a big transition of radio to podcast yes i was there i was there yeah i was his sidekick slash news girl that's what we called it back in the day wow for on fm radio we replaced howard stern on the west coast and i think we were there four and a half years and then you know stories all

this time the station flip formats and there was no longer talk and that's when he we were podcasting out of you know his house with his dog molly under our feet and then it became what it is now yeah and he's done an awesome job with his network. So let's talk about this book. How many books have you written? Cause so we can get a plugin for them. Chris, I write a book once every 10 years. It's that hard. It's like childbirth. After I finished the first book, which ironically was about childbirth, it was a humorous memoir about pregnancy called Exploiting My Baby. I wrote based on a successful blog I had been writing about pregnancy. And that was 10 years ago.

And this is my second book, Making It Home, which is a memoir about grief and baseball. So it's just those two. And I'm thinking like I spent the last 18 months writing this book. And honestly, if you're going to write a grief book, you have to cut right down to the bone or it's really not worth doing. So I remember when the last draft was finished thinking, I don't ever, ever, ever, ever want to write anything ever again. But I'm so happy with how this turned out. I said what I had to say, and I'm really happy with it. Grief is a hard thing to talk about. And, um, you know, I was, uh, in there, not ashamed to admit, I was in therapy last week talking about, um, all my anxiety about the book coming out because

I can convince myself I'm very uninhibited when I'm writing. I convince myself that, um, like, you know, no one's really going to see this. And I think I'm able to say exactly what I want to say. Whereas in person, like right now I'm super self-conscious. So I feel like as, as a writer, you can write and revise and rewrite. And when you're talking, like, I can't say to you, ah, I stumbled over the word Twitter. Can I have a do over? You know, I mean, I guess I can, but it would sound stupid. So, so I'm very, I'm, I feel much more comfortable in written form than speaking to you now. But when I was talking to my therapist, I was telling her how nervous I was, like, what if I can't do the book justice when I'm trying to promote it on appearances like this? And, and she said she said she was very reassuring

and she said, I'd be fine. I don't know if she's right. But one of the things she mentioned was that, you know, it was very difficult to write this book because I think naturally when you're dealing with grief and loss, you do something which my therapist calls adaptive oscillation,

which means she encourages people to go back to work if they're ready after a big loss because you need a break. So adaptive oscillation is you feel grief and then you get relief and then you can feel it and then you go to work. So baseball for my dad and I was the relief. It was normalcy. It was an activity we did four times a week, two games per kid of my kids that took us away from our grief. And, and, and writing this book, um, there is some difficult and heavy content. My brother died of cancer at 47. It was a long illness and anyone who's lost a friend or family member to a long illness understands it's, it's grueling, it's gruesome. It's

painful. It's awful. There are things you never, ever, ever want to think about again. You know, I write about this in the book, you know, buying diapers for my big brother when he was sick. It was just like getting an Amazon receipt. You know, it's just things like that, little details like that, that it's natural to run from. But when I was writing about it, I couldn't. So it was sort of like an unnatural oscillation process where I had to like sit and really think about those, those hard moments, those grief and loss moments, because otherwise I couldn't describe them well. However, there's a lot of baseball scenes in the book. So the book isn't, you know, yeah, you, you, you might need your waterproof mascara, but it's not that heavy because the Making It Home follows one single season of baseball. And it covers all these games that my dad and I obsessively watched and got way too into.

And those games are a framework for the story about family grief and redemption. And it flashes back and forth. So you're not stuck in a heavy-duty cancer scene for more than you can handle before you're back at a Little League game. There you go. And it's interesting, the setup that you go through. You know, what's that old saying, life springs eternal? Yeah, I think it's hope springs eternal.

Yes. But life does it. And one thing I went through when I lost my dogs and then got my new puppies, or sometimes when I had other losses and then started to appreciate my father and his age, there was almost like an awakening where I realized the value of the people around me.

Do you say that maybe that's the cathartic journey you go on here? I mean, there are some upsides to grief and loss. I think it makes you much more empathetic, you know, with, with, with people, with other people who are going through losses. Um, it kind of cracks your heart open in a way. We, we had this experience, my dad and I watching little league where we became so a team, and our team became a family, which is actually a quote that Cal Ripken Jr. said about my book. And I think it's so beautiful, and I'm so grateful. He said, this is a story about a team that becomes a family,

and a family that becomes a team. And that's really true. And I think going through grief or loss just opens up your heart a little. It softens you up a little. You're able to become a team and to become a family. I was able to accept my dad with all his imperfections and his problems. And, you know, he has half his teeth, lives in a trailer park. He does a little day drinking. You know, he's not perfect. That's Fridays around here. That's Fridays around here.

That's a typical Friday at the Chris Voss show. So I think when you've had a loss and, you know, I lost my mom four months to the day after my brother, which, you know, is also covered in this book. So I had what they call complicated grief or compound grief where I sort of wasn't able to come up for air from one loss and I had another. And I don't know if anyone can accomplish this with their adult parent, but I was able to do it and I really wanted to write about it because I am so close to my dad now because I just was able to accept him. I had reps at spending time with him going to these little league games. And there were a lot of lessons I learned from, from, from watching the kids on the diamond. You know, that's why the subtitle is life lessons from a season of little league. Uh, there's a lot of,

there's a lot of failure baked into baseball a lot. I mean, if you strike out six out of 10 times, you're going to be in the hall of fame. And that's why I love baseball as a framework. We're talking about grief and family and redemption because I wasn't, you know, it's not like my dad and I got along every game. And I write about that. There were fights and resentments and things from the past and we'd yell at each other. We would get, he would be in a mood if the team lost. Um, and, and we would sometimes get in fights, but we had practice and we had reps and we sort of like learned to absorb failure and loss. There you go. Now, your issue with your father, though, is very complicated.

We talked about that in the green room. And tell us a little bit about that lay the foundation of the story of you know kind of the history of you and your father and why this kind of made this more important for you guys to have would you call it a reconciling uh at the at the at the little league yes yes we had we had a reconciliation uh behind the first baseline in some chairs from Costco, watching a whole bunch of little league games and getting way too deep in our feelings where we would literally just leap out of our chairs and high five,

or we would go into like a depression if my son struck out or if our team lost. So I'll set the scene for you. It's the seventies. Parenting is pretty different back then. My parents were living in Los Angeles and my mom had left my dad to take a better job. And she just thought, well, now I'll get custody of my kids. I got a better job. I'm making more. I'm going to take the kids to Chicago. And, um, and that's that. Well, my mom's lawyer said no mother has ever lost custody of her children in

the history of Los Angeles County for wanting to take a better job. Well, my mom was that person and I haven't been able to confirm that fact, but it was highly unusual at the time. And she lost custody. She didn't get joint custody. She got zero custody. She lost my brother and I, we were, I was three and my big brother was five. So my dad, I think maybe overplayed his hand. I don't think he intended to get full custody at the time. He was a mechanic. He worked six days a week. He didn't really have the wherewithal or bandwidth to be the parent to two little kids who were pretty messed up, you know, because our mom had left and come back. And, um, you know, if you've ever been around or had toddlers, uh, we were very close in age and we were kind of wild. And, um, my dad just didn't know what to do.

So, uh, he returned me to my mom and kept my brother. So, wow. Yes, I know that a little bit of rejection that you're going to feel. I think, I don't know. Did you feel that? It's such a great question. You know, I, I, you know, how there are childhood memories and you don't know if you remember them or if you have a visual of them from people describing them to you. Um, when I went to live with my mom, I was three and a half and my dad said, previous to my brother dying, he said that was the worst day of his life. And he remembers me and my mom's Toyota Corolla, because he's a mechanic. So all memories have the specific car. He said he remembers me in my mom's car in the passenger seat with my ponytails driving away

and a tear just falling down my cheek. I don't, I didn't experience it as, as rejection at that time. And I saw him once a month. I took the Greyhound to see him because I lived in San Francisco. My dad and my brother lived in LA. But I, when my brother died, I had this visceral sense that I'd already grieved for him before. And I think when we were separated as children, that that was really traumatic for me because I have two boys now. And when they were around that age, I thought, wow, they are so interconnected. And if one day you just split them, like they would never be the same on a cellular level. And so I think that's really what happened for me. And I never felt, I never interpreted it as my dad rejecting me. I loved my dad. I worshiped my dad. I loved being in his garage when he was

fixing cars. I couldn't wait to go visit him. I admired him. I really wanted my parents to get remarried. And I really thought that that would happen. I had magical thinking. It was only as an adult that I really came to resent him and think like, how could you have divided siblings like that? And I was like, just really, really angry. Yeah. And probably as a mom, you're trying to square that circle. You're like, I would never do that to my children. Yeah. You know, having kids in some ways, it makes you understand things your parents did because you realize just how hard it is. But it also really, in my case, it made me really, really resent them. Like, I'm so nervous. Like, just the thought of one of my kids riding their bicycle without a helmet gives me like literally a stomachache.

Like, just like, i'm so worried but my parents uh put me on the greyhound bus back and forth when i was eight years old across the prison belt of central california and they sweat it none we were both latchkey kids man yo i mean my my mom would put a thing on her shirt saying, please kidnap him. Please. Take him. Take him. She'd leave us in the car at Ralph's and put a sign on the window. Free kids.

Oh, I love that. We must have had a similar childhood. I was in the inner city in San Francisco and was very much riding the city bus to school and home from ballet in the dark. And I mean, look, we're Gen X and it was a different time and parenting was different. And so you have to see it through that lens. And sometimes I look back and I wonder if we're parenting too hard now. And I wish I could maybe be a little more laissez-faire with, with my kids, but I have a lot of worry probably because of the way I was raised. And I think like, I don't,

I don't want my kids to be in unsafe and unsettling situations that, that we were in a lot. Yeah. And that's, and that's what mamas do. Mamas are great at protecting kids. You know, we, like I said, we grew up in that latchkey Gen X generation. I mean, I actually saw this the other day and posted it on Facebook. They actually had a PSA and Andy Warhol.

And who's the gal who sung Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Cyndi Lauper was in it. Cyndi Lauper. And a bunch of other stars. I think David Bowie was in it. You're like, what the hell? And, I mean, do you really want Andy Warhol worrying about your kids? Like, I don't know, man.

There was a lot of drugs going on. And so she's like, they had a PSA. They're like, do you know where your kids are? It's 10 o'clock. Do you remember that? Oh. They had to remind parents to, to like find their kids at midnight yes okay i used to be on good day new york which is a morning show in new york and their 10 p.m

news would always open with it's 10 p.m do you know where your kids are can you imagine first of all you would get arrested now if your kids were out at 10 p.m and you didn't know where they were um but yeah they back then david bowie needed to tell you to to change your ways and know where you can find them kids you've probably seen these memes about gen x i hope you have where you know it says like we survived on water from a garden hose you know we're the real F around and find out. But it's true. There was, particularly with my parents who were real big hippies. And, you know, my mom was a working mom.

My dad ran a car garage. They were busy. And, like, really, they weren't that interested in kid stuff. Like, they weren't going to get on the floor with us and play with toys or take us to kid my dad never took us to a kid movie you know when you have a divorced dad you go to the movies on a sunday my dad would take me to see whatever he wanted to see it wasn't going to be a cartoon like i in my whole childhood i never saw a disney movie hopefully it wasn't on those 70s movies that, you know, that famous director made back in the day. You know, those crazy 70s movies that were really good movies and stuff like that.

I did see, my mom did take me to see Midnight Cowboy. Oh, wow. Okay. In which, I don't know if you remember, not appropriate for kids. This is in my book, Making It Home, which does cover my very unusual 70s San Francisco childhood. In that, I was taking the bus back and forth, as I mentioned, and I don't want to spoiler this movie if you haven't seen it, but the main, one of the main characters, Ratso Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman, dies on a Greyhound bus. So that was great for me.

You know, you mentioned earlier in the, uh, in the green room too, I think it was a line from Billy Crystal, one of Billy Crystal's movies. And, uh, give me that line again, because I think that really connects to why baseball is so important to, uh, you know, connecting with family and fathers. I don't remember the quote. Which one? I think it was from something about, I know that there was one I was trying to find online

where Billy Crystal said, my dad was a son of a bitch or something along those lines, but the only way we could ever talk and connect was going to baseball games. And that's when we connected with a hot dog and a coke something that's something along those lines and i couldn't figure out which movie it comes from uh i thought it came from city slickers um i maybe did which is one of my favorite movies but but i think you also mentioned the field of dreams maybe yes yes well billy crystal is a renowned

baseball fan and i think we were talking about the general, the generational nature of baseball. And that's why we love the field of dreams. Like the, this idea that you could see your dad again, he would come from the cornfield and play catch with you. It's, it's like something so deeply rooted in, you know,

it's the American pastime. And, you know, my dad coached my brother and my husband coached my sons. I think a lot of people will relate to that and i think that's why um you know there's an eternal quality to baseball and there is a famous quote um that which i'm gonna botch but but the the nature of it is um that baseball is one of is is the only sport that that doesn't have a clock. So it's possible for a game of baseball to last forever.

And in the quote, it says, and in that way, it collects it connects the living with the dead. And I have a lot of baseball quotes in my book from Bull Durham to Babe Ruth to Yogi Berra. But that is one of my favorite quotes because there is this eternal quality. Right. Because there's this eternal quality right because there's this sense that this game could i mean it doesn't but it could go on forever you you could have extra innings until the end of time and there's just something so beautiful and eternal about that and the thought of angels in the outfield and the thought of your dad coming you know coming out of the cornfield to play catch with you again.

I don't think there's a little league dad or mom who played baseball or softball who doesn't have the feels the first time they see their kid in a uniform in T-ball with their little cleats out there. That's just going to, it resonates on a generational level. You're right. And, uh, you know, for a lot of us men as sons, uh, our fathers played baseball with us.

They threw the ball with us. That was something we did as a childhood. So it brings back all those childhood memories. So you mentioned that your father's was a little bit cantankerous. He's in his old age. I'm kind of getting there. I'm 55 now.

I'm about as cantankerous as can possibly be. Um, tell us a little bit cantankerous. He's in his old age. I'm kind of getting there. I'm 55 now. I'm about as cantankerous as can possibly be. Tell us a little bit about that and how you build this, kind of rebuild this relationship with your father. And you come from what we talked about earlier, where you're kind of not quite happy with him. And then throughout this book, you describe how you reach a state of betterment with him. So my dad, as I mentioned, he's missing like half of his teeth. He only rides a bike. He doesn't have a car. He rides his bike everywhere.

We live in Arizona. He rides his bike everywhere in summer. So he has like a giant hat that he puts under his bike helmet. And it's always like sweaty and covered with sunscreen and greasy and no matter how many hats I buy him he only wants that hat so like we live you know in like a nice neighborhood you know it's you know of a middle class neighborhood and then my dad shows up with half his teeth sweaty greasy hat right for a while he'd had the spandex bike shorts. And you know, he's pushing 80 up a hill, and I don't want to see the outline of old man balls. And I especially don't want my dad to be those balls that people see. So he would also then

take his bike. And instead of a bike cover, he had a lime green fitted sheet, because he's a very thrifty man. And he would take his bike and throw a lime green sheet over because he's a very thrifty man and bike and throw a lime green sheet over it. And it would be in the outfield. And then, you know, up walks my dad who does do a little day drinking. And especially if,

like it's a stressful game that in the, in the team's losing. So, you know, I wanted my dad to be like rolling up in a, in a, in a, in a nice sensible Volvo with like, oh my gosh.

I mean, all of his clothes are from Walmart, and he only will buy certain Dickies shorts, like an $11 brand. And I told you about the hat, and then he has a black shirt, but there's always lint. And then because he doesn't have all his teeth, Chris, the chewing's a problem. Have you ever seen a man with half his teeth try to chew a Snyder's hard pretzel? It's not pretty. I mean, I never would look, but I mean, he is your dad, so you're. I mean, the chewing, the spitting, the spandex, the hat, the teeth.

And then on top of all that, after my brother died, he developed these eye twitches right like i don't know if it was a stress thing like so they like really like they're called blepharospasms and he would spasm and they would go like down into sometimes in his jaw so if you're not already looking at him because there's a lime green sheet on his bike and he's got the spandex and the giant sweaty hat now he's twitching like his eyes are blinking and he's got the spandex and the giant sweaty hat. Now he's twitching, like his eyes are blinking and he's just calling a lot of attention to himself. But I went from being embarrassed by my dad

at the beginning of the season to, I know this sounds cheesy, but to my dad's my hero and my best friend. And a lot of that had to do with baseball because when we were on the sidelines together, rooting for this team in an unnaturally serious and intense way, I remember after the first practice, I called him that night and we had a 45 minute conversation,

my dad and I. And as a lot of sports fans know, you can have an extremely emotional conversation where real feelings and thoughts are being exchanged, but you're ostensibly just talking about a team, whether it's the Yankees, the Phoenix suns, you know, the 49ers or a little E team. My dad and I talked for 45 minutes because it was the first time we'd seen our team, the purple pinstripes. And we were talking about lineups and who should play shortstop and who's got the big bat and who's throwing, you know, who's throwing heat. And that was the beginning. And after every game we texted back and forth, or we talked about, you know, breaking down like

who should have made a double play and didn't who's the best catcher on the team. Why, why didn't coach put so-and-so in center field? You know, who's, who should be at second base? Let's flip this lineup. You know, we got into it. And in that way, we were having a real conversation and a real exchange of feelings. But the way, you know, at the beginning of the book, I thought I started a file on my computer, Chris, and it was called little league grief group. Cause I started thinking that this is my dad and my grief group. And that was what I called it. And I, and it was called Little League Grief Group because I started thinking that this is my dad and my grief group. And that was what I called it. And it became the book, which is now making it home.

But I realized that at the beginning, I thought it was going to be a book about me and how I had learned to tolerate these feelings of grief by watching baseball. And then in midway through the book, I thought, Oh, it's a hero's journey, but the hero is my dad because my dad experienced a type of grief and loss. That was much different than, than mine because he lost a child.

Yeah. And to see him walk through that, he never shut the door on it. He was living with it. And, um, you know, I, I write about this. Um, his trailer has a shed, a little shed next to it. I don't know if you've been to any trailer parks recently, but they got the little, they got the three stairs that the, they're, they're, they're mobile. You roll up the stairs to the door and then there's an Astro Troof rug. And then there's a little shed where you put your stuff. And

my dad had all my brother's, you know, old trophies and pictures of my brother in the shed. And the door didn't close. And my dad's very handy. He was a mechanic. And I knew that he could have fixed the door. So the way that my dad, my dad didn't have any pictures of my brother inside of his trailer. And I thought like, this is my dad. He doesn't throw away the pictures. He doesn't shut the door on the pictures. He can't have them right in his face because it's too hard, but he's not, but he's not shutting the, you know, he's not shoving them away. And, um, I learned how to do grief from my dad. That is awesome. I mean, the beautiful part about your book is, you know, I, I remember

sharing grief when my first dog died years ago. And I, and I remember spending a half an hour to press the button and I'm like, this is too much all about me. This is selfish. No one's going to care. And, uh, I, I pressed the button and sent it and passed out from all the vodka I'd been drinking. And, uh, the next morning and, uh, and ongoing through a couple of my dogs, uh, seeing me share what I did, the grief, the pain, the, the catharticism of going through it all and stuff helps so many other people. And so people are going to be able to read your book. They're going to see the catharsis that you went through and

they're probably going to reflect. Like I had people writing me privately going, I, I cried when you wrote what was going through with your, with your grief, because, uh, I realized that I hadn't gotten closure on some things with my father or my animals or whatever. I realized that I still need to flesh it out. And so what's great about books like yours is people can see that and use that as a blueprint to go, wow, I need to work on some things about me and maybe appreciate our fathers and mothers a little bit more. Well, that was beautiful. And I'm sorry for your losses.

And I'm glad you shared about it. There is a famous quote in my book that is said by one of the big grief experts who worked with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. And his name is David Kessler. And he said, grief needs a witness. So when you wrote about your dog in your vodka-induced haze, that's what you were. And when it resonated for people, you were getting your grief witnessed. And that's why I wrote this book, because I hope that when people read it, they'll say, or they'll nod or they'll say, yes,

that's what it felt like for me too. That's what it felt like. Because if I can describe exactly how it was for me, in my specific experience, I hope that that resonates because there's not one of us who is not going to be touched by loss and grief. Maybe it hasn't happened yet, but we're not getting off this rock without losing someone or something that we love. And so it's a human experience that we're all going to have to go through and tolerate and absorb. And that's why baseball made such a great framework for talking about it because there's losing. There's losing an inning, losing a game. There's failure.

It's so much failure. It's hard. It's painful. When you see – I was just at a Little League game last night because my younger one is still playing. And when you – in the playoffs, it's intense, Chris. And when you see a 10-year-old strike out in a big spot in a high leverage moment and the walk from the plate back to the dugout where they're trying not to cry, the pain of the failure of the loss is so visceral. It's so real.

And your adult brain understands, like, this is okay. This is not life or death. But something in my heart is just like, when a kid's up there on two strikes on my team, on my team, forget the other team. Okay. I need to grind them down. I'm very competitive. But if it's one of my babies, not literally my babies, but someone on my team, I'm not

even religious, but when I'm on two strikes and there's two outs, I will pray to Jesus, Moses, Elvis, and the babe for that kid to get a hit. I want it so badly. And then part of me understands though, that failure is inevitable, that it's necessary to grow, that we have to deal with it, that we have to absorb it. I, I think also, you know, I write about getting hit by a pitch and I don't know if you play little league. But every kid you get, let me just tell you that you're going to get hit by a pitch. You will get hit by a wild pitch. And that's how I feel about grief. It is going to happen to you and all you have to do

uh is like feel it tolerate it absorb it get curious about how it feels um and and move move through it because in baseball you know a lot of kids do a thing called stepping in the bucket it's an expression that any baseball player little leaguer knows because there's a hard object hurling at you, right? And it's coming fast. And a lot of 10 year old pitchers, which is the age I write about in my book, nine and tens, they're wild. They're Charlie Sheen in major league. They can't get anywhere near the zone half the time, right? So a hard object is coming at you in an unpredictable way. You're going to step in the bucket. You're going to step away because you're going to, it's so natural for us to flinch. And I, when I sat through this season, um, that's covered in making it home, I related

to every kid that stepped in the bucket because when something painful is going to happen to me, I just, I want, I want to get away from it because it hurts too bad and it hurts too much. And that's how I felt when my brother died. You know, every night when I was going to sleep, I would just like, I would think to myself, like, is this real? Did this really happen? Is my big brother dead? Is he really dead? Is he really dead? And, and, and it was hard and it hurt. And when, when I saw, and there's one kid in particular, there's a character in my book, who's a real, real kid. I did change his name.

He stepped in the bucket for an entire season. He couldn't stay. He couldn't stay inside against a pitch because he was too scared of getting hit. But here's the thing. If you don't stay inside, you're never hitting the ball square. So if you want to hit a home run,

and if you want to hear that sweet sound of that ball, you know, if you're barreling up the ball with the bat, you have to risk getting hit. And then you get hit, it hurts, you get to first and you move on. There you go. I mean, that's such a great analogy for, like you said, dealing with the trials and triumphs and things that are going to be thrown at us in life. You know, we don't sometimes have a choice. But you've got to, you know, it's how you process it and how you deal with it. Yeah, and I always think, would you rather not play? You know, would you, yeah, you know, it hurts.

I don't want to get hit. I don't want my kids to get hit. You know, the other thing about baseball that, you know, about Little League is that it's kind of a microcosm for a lot of things about parenting because you can't control the outcome. At the, during this season, my son's pitching was so wild. Okay. He's a big lefty. He plays now he's 13 and he's really, if I can brag, you know, he's,'s he's he's got excellent command now but at that time when he was nine he had his arm was he had velo i mean he threw hard but you didn't know what you're

gonna get some games he was throwing strikes the next game it was like into the dirt it was sailing over the catcher's head and um uh i had what what's a PMS, pitcher's mom syndrome, where I just was, you just, oh, it's so terrifying. Because the thing is, your kid's all alone up there on the mound, and there is nothing that you can do. You can pray, and you can wish, and you can clap, and you can cheer, and you can encourage, but you can't get up there and throw strikes for your kid. And I remember a couple of innings where, um, where, where, where my son was struggling and it was so painful. And my dad sitting, you know, sitting next to each other in our, in our Costco chairs. And he said about pitching, but I knew that it was also about parenting. You cannot protect your kids from life.

And he's somebody who couldn't save his kid from dying. And it put in perspective that I couldn't save my kid from a real bad outing on the mound. Although, Chris, a fun fact about Little League, I learned through my son that season, because he was so wild. Okay, the little league of America to protect our children has a rule that if a pitcher hits three kids with a pitch in one inning,

that pitcher has to be pulled. And nobody has ever heard of that rule until my son did it. And the ump said, um, sorry, but that kid's got to be pulled. He's hit three batters in one inning. So look, he turned out to be a really good pitcher. So, you know, it's just. You know, I don't have any kids of my own, but I've been to Little League games. And I remember going as a kid to mine. I don't think my parents

showed up but i was latchkey kid so that makes sense uh but uh i've been to the little league games and i i've had usually whoever i was dating and then the divorced father uh somewhere in the crowd and you know we're all doing what you guys do at little league games you know yelling and screaming and cheering for the kid and yelling at the other team. And I remember one time, the pseudo stepson of mine, he comes up to us, and I think he was like 10 or 12, and he goes, hey, guys, why don't you just calm down? It's just a game, man. You're making a big deal.

He had better perspective than we through all of this. The kid. The kid. Yeah, the kid did. Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean. He just dialed back a little bit mom and dad you so you've been on the sidelines in your in your pseudo pseudo stepdad role yeah i've seen the violence i you know i think another very interesting thing about youth sports and as it pertains to the the psychology of parenting and sort of like how you have to learn to let go.

I think there's, you know, obviously some ego attachment when your kid is very good at something. If that thing is chess or an instrument, it's no different, but I don't know. In, in athletics, I've seen this a lot where, and it happened with my dad. My dad was a mediocre athlete. He never made a team and my brother was an all-star and he was, he was excellent. He was very, very good. And I think my dad, you, you get swept up in it. Like I made this person and this person's great. And I wasn't great. And he's going to be great during the course of the season and making it home. I remember being in the parking lot and my dad, who didn't

talk about my, my brother very much. He said, um much he said um he said we called my brother's name was morgan but we called him mugsy and the car was stopped and my dad wasn't getting out and he said t i really thought mugsy was gonna make it to the bigs i really thought he was gonna make it and then i knew that he meant that he thought that my brother could, could, could play professionally. And then he took a beat and he said, somebody has to make it to the show. Why not him? Why not Muggsy? And I, I understood so deeply then that my dad had grieved when my brother stopped playing because he was so, um, he was so identified with my brother being an all-star and being good. Cause he, he never had that experience, um, you know, as a kid himself. he was so identified with my brother being an all-star and being good because he

he never had that experience you know as a kid himself and my brother at 13 he just stopped being able to hit he got what they call the yips and we don't know why he's you know maybe his eyesight changed you know nobody really knows but it was like the death of this dream for my dad and I think he had a sort of a grief then. And I know for me, I felt that on the sidelines because, you know, my, my, you know, my, my kid in this, I have two boys and they're, they're both all-stars and you want to think that you're mature and that it's just kids playing and you want to, you know, but there's a part of you that just can't help to feel like

it's you throwing strikes or hitting home runs. Like you, like you're, you're identified with this excellence and, and it, it like fills you up with this, with this joy. And then when things go badly, you feel so defeated because not only do you want your kid to be happy, you know, and succeed, but, um, there's, there's something like, you know, when, when, when, um, you know, my kid pitched last night, he came into close, he threw, um, he almost had what they call an immaculate inning, which is nine strikes, but he threw 10 pitches. He had one ball ball but part of me though i did nothing chris is like i'm the mother of dragons i made i made him i made him that's my that's my baby and i think that's why you see parents act a fool on the sidelines because we're involved in it as much

as you try not to be you know you you, with, with your kid. And you, you think, uh, I, I remember this, this, um, this movie called searching for Bobby Fisher about a chess prodigy. And there's this great scene where the dad, um, uh, was that actor? Um, uh, such a good scene. He, he goes to Laura Linney plays the kid's teacher. And he's like, you know, she says, well, maybe you're spending too much time on this chess thing and he goes this chess thing you've never been at as good as anything in your

life as my kid is at this chess thing right and i've always related to that scene because that's what happens if you're lucky enough to have a kid who's you know might have a kid who's, you know, might have a knack for something or be a little bit of a prodigy. It becomes about you too. Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting too. My, the things that shaped me as a, uh, as a, as a man, as a boy was my relationship with both of my alpha, uh, grandfathers. And I was probably the last of generation, generation X to have access to that. Um, and, and those are the most valuable times that I remember now in my space. Uh, do you talk about in the book about, uh, maybe the impact on your sons, uh, you know, and, and seeing their mother and their, and their grandfather together, uh, reconciling, uh, dealing with this and,

and just being a part of being a family and togetherness that a lot of families don't really have anymore. They're kind of stuck looking at their iPhones and iPads. My cheeks hurt from smiling. I'm so happy to hear that you are close with your grandparents and that we get to talk about this because I always forget to talk about this. Yeah. So in baseball, there's always a chance for redemption, right? Because as we talked about, a game could go on forever. And I think that's true in a family. So my dad said, I wasn't a good dad, but I'm a great grandfather. And I think a lot of grandparents can relate to that. Redemption, right? It's possible in baseball. You can be down to your

last out and still win a game. You can be on two strikes and hit a home run. My dad found redemption as a grandfather. And you're absolutely right. We aren't really living the way we used to, like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Charlie's grandpa was sleeping in the living room yeah no like i i was really close to my grandpa too and my grandparent my dad you know can ride his bike to my house my dad has never missed a baseball game of one of my kids never at one time he had some kind of infection he was in the hospital and he told the nurse like i'm getting out of here because my kid has a game. Took off the bracelet and he said, see ya. So, you know, he's around a lot and he's part of my kids' lives.

And just seeing that relationship heals a lot of wounds from my own childhood where my dad wasn't around a lot. He's there and I'm glad that you got the chance to be close to both your grandparents. And I think it'll make a difference to your sons in the future. They'll remember it. You know, it really will. It's weird. You know, sometimes as men, or I think as men and women, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think sometimes, you know, we go through that youth. We go through teenage-dom.

We're trying to find our ego. And we're pretty selfish at that point and all about us. And, and sadly we lose a lot of access to our parent grandparents. You know, I, I see my mother going through with her grandkids, um, where she's, uh, you know, they're kind of at that moment where they're, they're focused on their lives. You know, they're trying to build and figure out this whole stupid world. And she's like, you know, I feel like I've lost them. I'm like, they'll come back. They'll come back. They're going to, they, they, there's a moment where they start to, they get things down and they, and they go, Hey, what's my history? Who am I? What am I about? And maybe women do it more

when they have a family and, you know, maybe fathers do too. And, you know, they have to start explaining, you know, who are we to their kids? But I think this is beautiful, what you put in the story and everything else. And a moving thing. And it can help so many people in so many different ways. And maybe we all need to start spending each other time with our loved ones at baseball. And listen, it might be something different for you. It was baseball for us. It was just the routine of going to game after game, the reps and the practice.

And for me, because I'd already lost a parent and I'd already lost my brother and he was all I had left from my nuclear family of origin, I just had to practice like not snapping at him and not yelling at him over every little thing and not being annoyed because he couldn't chew the pretzel and because he put the green sheet over the bike, but like just going, this is my dad and I'm proud of him. And you know, when I was on the sidelines for that season, like I said,

at first I, I was like embarrassed and I wished for like a country club dad with like a normal car and a windbreaker. And by the end, I realized I've only seen one grandparent that's here every game. And I would never, ever, I would never, ever trade him, you know, rolling up in a Range Rover in a suit for him being here every single game. And by the way, always a half an hour early, like old people do. Really? Wow.

There you go. So this is a beautiful story. Who would play your grandfather, or your son's grandfather, who would play your father in a movie? I'm thinking of the spandex. I want to see the spandex. I can just see this with a green sheet and the bicycle.

I want to see this in the movie. I'm so glad you asked this. I have three ideas and one of them is, I think very, very doable and solid. So when I was writing the proposal for this, I thought it was, I thought it was a solid idea.

Like I told you, I had a file in my computer called little league grief group. And I thought like, what if I just write about this season about grief and about baseball and about family? And I just felt like, I think I can say what I want to say. I think I can, I can really talk about grief in a sort of lighthearted way because, because baseball. And I, I, I ran it by my agent and he said, this proposal is really good. But if you write me a scene, one, if you write me a chapter, write the Oscar scene. I can sell this book if you write me the scene that wins the actor, the Oscar that's playing this.

And if I'm describing it, you know what I mean, right? It's the scene. It's the scene, right? So I went to a hotel by myself for 24 hours so I could get away from my kids and think. And I thought and I thought and I cried and I walked around the block and I stressed and I cried. And then, and then I got it. And then I got it. I knew, I knew the scene. I knew the scene that if the actor played the scene, they would win the Oscar. And I'm going to tell you the actor that I think should do it in a second. But the scene, um, once in a baseball game, my dad said, sometimes I scream your brother's name.

When I, when I, when I ride home on my bike, I scream, I scream his name. And I was like, he didn't really use my dad, you know, doesn't really offer up that kind of emotional information. We're like, we're going to talk about loss. It's baseball only. Right. So I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean?

You scream his name. I don't know. I'm not bothering anybody. You know, I'm not bothering bothering anybody it's late and it's dark and no one hears me and then i said well do you like is that it do you just like scream his name or just do you say anything else and and then i just looked at his face and i knew it was too much and he didn't want to talk about it anymore so i never brought it up but that night i went to sleep and i i just thought about my dad and that's the scene wrote. I wrote an old man who's lost his son to cancer and he's leaving a baseball game where he's seen his grandson who reminds him

of his son and they're both lefties and he's riding in the dark and my dad's, you know, bald and, um, and he's screaming into the night because this is the only way he can like release his grief. And he's just, he's screaming his dead son's name into the night on the bike path through Arizona. And so, um, I wrote that scene and interwoven with, you know, baseball and my dad and I talking about baseball and the lineup and all that stuff and the nitty gritty. And then my dad screaming, screaming out, you know and and and where does the sound of his voice go and uh father's grief um and then you know that that the book did turn out to sell thankfully and that is still my favorite scene that i that i wrote

it's just a beautiful scene and okay now just bear with me because i know that was a very very long preamble but bear with me because this this that was a very very long preamble but bear with me because this this actor is not known for drama but there's a lot of comedy in my book okay he shaves his head and this man's name is henry winkler oh that's a great father figure right there do you not think he could win an oscar he, dude, he could. I mean, America loves him. That is his role right there. Look, Billy Crystal could play it, and here's another one. I don't know how easy it's going to be to get Harrison Ford, but he's the right age.

There you go. There you go. How does Harrison Ford look in spandex? I don't know. Why am I thinking that? We'll find out. I don't know. Whatever.

We should all find out. Well, he's on a show called shrinking. So hopefully that doesn't reflect how he'd look. Oh, you know, it's, uh, I, I just think the image that you painted of your father is, is just funny and unique and, and it's character. I mean, as men, we have some weird quirky character, but it's who we are.

Oh, I didn't, I didn't mean Chris. Sorry to interrupt you, but I left out that he has a lot of ear hair and nose hair. That's being old. Yeah. I'm kind of getting there. Well, you know, like you got to trim it. And I said, dad, please. I took him to a barber, like the old fashioned barber with the red pole and everything in Scottsdale here where we live.

And they did a beautiful job and he looked so great. And I was like, dad, just, just do this every couple of months. I'll pay for it. Just please just, I don't want you showing up a little league games with all your ear hair and

nose hair. And he just like, he's so thrifty. He doesn't even like spending my money. Wow. Yeah. So he refused. But by the end of the season,

I just thought like, look, this is my dad those are his balls that's his ear hair that's his nose hair that's his sweaty hat like he's here he's here at every game that's the dad i get that's it i love him i accept him and like this is who he is he does not have all his teeth and he does not have all his marbles, but that's what I get. There you go. That's the one thing I remember about my grandfather that's endearing to me, his nose hair and his ear hair. And we used to tease him about it. And he's like, you wait, you wait. And I'm 55 and God damn it, he was right. The curse continues. But thank you very

much for being on the show. This has been beautiful and wonderful to share. And I think it's a story that everyone's going to fall in love with. Thank you so very much for having me. It was really a pleasure. There you go. And give me your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs, Teresa. At Teresa Strasser, T-E-R-E-S-A-S-T-R-A-S-S-E-R. There you go. Thanks, Amandas, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Vfoss, linkedin.com forward slash chrisfoss, youtube.com forward slash chrisfoss. Order it up wherever fine books are sold. You can pre-order it now so you can be the first on your block

or your book club to say you read it. Making at Home, Life Lessons from a Season of Little League, June 6, 2023. It comes out. Teresa Strasser has been on the show with us as well. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.