Newsletter 47: Lying to Baseball Coaches About Scholastic Bowl

I’ve decided to start putting some of the best newsletter essays here on Medium, so more people can read them. You’re still better off just subscribing. This one is March 2017, about something I did in high school I’ve always felt a little guilty about. I feel like I should have done more dangerous and fun things to feel guilty about.

I never had a letterman’s jacket in high school — I was more a trenchcoat type of guy, though less in a “goth, trenchcoat mafia” sort of way and more in a “it made me feel like a British detective” way — but I did earn two varsity letters my junior and senior years. The first letter was for playing on the baseball team; I was the backup catcher, or third-string catcher, depending on what mood my coach was in. There were 20 players on the team, and I was probably the 18th or 19th best. The second letter was for playing on the scholastic bowl team, where I was an all-conference player. (Grierson was team captain because he was more organized and more sober-minded than me. Plus, man, you should have seen the pregame speeches.) I’ve never exactly understood why you got an athletic letter for scholastic bowl; it’s not like the chess club or the A/V Club got one. Maybe just because they kept score? Is that enough to make it athletics?

Either way, the two sports, such as they were, took place in the same season…