Puig is Going to Baseball
This week we turned Sports Stories over to our kids.
For a few months, Adam and I have been talking about letting our kids create an issue of Sports Stories. This week, it finally happened. We’ll call it Sports Stories Jr. Or maybe Once Upon a Sports Stories. Either way, you’ll be reading stories told by my son Clay, who is 4, and illustrated by Adam’s insanely talented son Emilio, who is 6. They are both (rightly) huge fans of Yasiel Puig.
We didn’t really plan on this issue coinciding with the entire world staying home from school. But now that that’s happening, we’ll also encourage any Sports Stories readers with kids to have them create their own Sports Stories and share them with us-- and we’d love to publish them all together at a future date.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t provide Clay with any suggestions for what to talk about beyond Puig. But as you can see, he’s picking up some of the ambient weird vibes in the world. As for the art, Emilio drew it himself and colored it himself on Adam’s computer (this is his first digitally colored piece). Hope everyone is staying safe and sane out there. We hope you enjoy these three short stories about Yasiel Puig.
Puig is Going to Baseball
Art by Emilio, Story by Clay
I.
Once upon a time Puig got a hit.
A triple. He hit it high to center field. He ran to third base, but nobody tagged him with the ball. He ran fast.
And then after that, the next turn he got at baseball he got a home run. The home run was high, where you couldn’t even reach it if you jumped high.
Puig was on the Dodgers. The outfielder was Springer. Springer reached up in the sky as high as he could. He just jumped, he did not use a helicopter to try and catch it. The ball went over the fence. We were sitting there. We got our gloves and I caught it.
After the game, I brought the ball to our house, and made it be decoration. Puig went to his house. He lived in a blue house, because the Dodgers are blue. He had a Puig piggy bank in his house that he played with and put money in.
He ate dinner and went to bed.
II.
One day Puig had to get some toilet paper. He tried to go to Target to find it, but instead he just turned into the wrong place to find it. This place only sold shoes (because he turned into the shoes place). At the shoes place, he bought some new cleats. Target only had shoes almost. It also had clothes. The cleats were green. He tried them on, he liked them. But there was no toilet paper there so he had to go somewhere else.
He went to look for more toilet paper. Not at the shoes place. He looked at another store. He looked at Nordstrom Rack. There were no people there, but they had a lot of stuff. They had toilet paper. Puig bought 60 toilet papers. He put them in his bathrooms, because he had 60 bathrooms. It’s a big house.
After that he went to Dodger Stadium. He was playing a real game for the Dodgers (not with kids or with animals). He did not bring any toilet paper with him. They had enough there. They had 20 rolls at Dodger Stadium. A thousand people go to a Dodger game -- no a million!
Puig wore his green cleats at the baseball game. The Dodgers were up first. They won. They played the Giants. This time Puig when he was up almost only got home runs. When he didn’t get home runs, he got a double. (He was not out.)
After the game, he went to the bank. He got some money and then he went to his house. He needed money for the baseball games to play. Puig has to pay to go to the baseball games. He pays one dollar. He pays it to the bank at Dodger Stadium. All the players pay one dollar.
Then Puig went back to his house. He has showers and baths there, and food. He has fruit, he has tofu, and he has Thai food. And he has chips.
III.
One day Puig was going to another house to buy and he found one that was taller than the blue house that he had. But this one only had 20 bathrooms. And it had 20 bedrooms. It was in Seattle. The other house was in LA. He went on a plane to Seattle.
Puig also has a house in Cuba. That’s his oldest house. That house has some other people in it. Some of the other Dodger players live in that house in Cuba. Like Bellinger and Mookie. They lived in Cuba. They went to parks a lot, and playgrounds, and lakes. They swam in lakes.
They also ate a lot of food at restaurants. Their favorite foods to eat at restaurants are tacos.
They went on a trip to LA, and there were 20 bathrooms -- wait no -- 101 bathrooms. 20 of them were in bedrooms. The other 81 were next to bedrooms. They were like the next room over. This house was in Cuba where Puig lived with Bellinger and Mookie. They each had their own bedrooms and own bathrooms.
They were really apartments, so there were other people there too. There were 101 toilet papers at the apartment.
—The End—
Reminder: If your kids want to write or draw their own Sports Stories, please send them our way! We’d love to read/see them, and would love to share them with the world. You can reply to this email or send them to enusbaum (at) gmail
Stealing Home
Publication day for STEALING HOME, which was written by Clay’s dad and illustrated by Emilio’s dad, comes next week. If you haven’t checked out the book, now would be a great time to pre-order — especially from a local, independent bookstore. We’re in weird times. All book tours and all book events around the country have been canceled. This sucks for authors, but it also sucks for bookstores. I can’t state this strongly enough: local bookshops are crucial to writers and artists like us. Without them, we couldn’t do what we do. And right now, they are being absolutely crushed. If you can order the book from one, you’ll be supporting the folks who make this newsletter, and doing a good thing for a local business that needs your support.
Here’s what Chuck D of Public Enemy said about STEALING HOME:
Stealing Home has a driving plot, a humane heart, and a proud conscience. Read it and enjoy the story, or read it and get mad, or read it and change your mind. Most importantly, read it.”
Here’s a link to IndieBound, which will direct you to a local bookstore where you can buy it:
And here’s a picture of me holding the actual book, which you could have in your hands if you listen to Chuck D:
This has been Vol. 20something of Sports Stories by Eric Nusbaum (words) and Adam Villacin (art) (except this week). If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please reply to this email or contact enusbaum@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you.
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