Interview #58: The Twin Bill
Scott Bolohan, writer, pitcher and now publishing giant
Scott Bolohan is a lifelong baseball fan who is determined to keep playing until his body taps out. From Detroit, with stops in Chicago, New York and Massachusetts, he has an impressive writing resume that includes work for the Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, McSweeney’s, and even a sports column in Playboy, if you were reading the articles. In 2020, he founded the online literary baseball publication, The Twin Bill. This year, they began selling print copies of their library of submissions. The new anthology, titled Early Innings, is out next week and can be found here.
He did a really cool interview with Darryl Strawberry that you can read here: Interview: Darryl Strawberry. Also, his submission in Early Innings can be read here: Duck. I read both before we talked, like cramming for a test, and they were both great reads, especially the story about Duck which was written in a very unique way.
We also talked about the Tigers and Tiger Stadium, his playing days that still continue today, even in England, and keeping busy with writing while his professional career is currently in some turbulence.
So how are you?
It's certainly an interesting time that we're living through here. I'm very glad that baseball season is coming back as a distraction. I’m going to Florida this weekend. So I “work”, there are air quotes on this, for two Major League teams. I give stadium tours for Yankee Stadium. Then in the summer, I go back home and I coach the Detroit Tigers summer kids camp. So I'm going to go see two games in Tampa with the Yankees and then going to see the Tigers play a few games. My parents are coming with me, it’ll be great. So I'm really excited about that.
How did you get involved coaching for the Tigers camps?
I grew up in Detroit. I fly back home to my parents’ house for a couple weeks in the summer. I do maybe 3 camps this year. There are weeklong camps at different high schools around the city, but we take the kids to Comerica Park, and they get to go there and play on the field. And then a Tiger (note: a baseball player, not an actual tiger) comes out and they get to interview the Tiger. I always take them through the stadium. This was my dream as a kid. And I think in some ways I get more out of it than the kids do. Being able to coach baseball at Comerica Park and hear the gravel underneath my feet as I step on the warning track at a Major League ballpark is really, really cool. My parents still have Tigers season tickets and so I try to get back there and see games whenever I can. It is just a really cool way to stay involved with the game and be a part of it in a way.
How long did you play for? You played with (current Cubs infielder) Jon Berti?
Jon Berti was on my high school team. I was the captain, I was a senior and Jon Berti was a freshman. It's so funny when I see him now 'cause his swing, the way he stands, it's all the same as it was when he was a 14-year-old kid. I never thought that I was playing with a major leaguer. My junior year, we had a really, really good team, we made it to the quarter finals of the state tournament and DJ LeMahieu’s team knocked us out. I was like, oh, that guy’s a Major Leaguer, he was a stud.
Berti’s story is he grinded all the time. He didn't make the majors until he was 28. At Tigers camp, and I coach high school ball, too, I tell them, you want to be Jon Berti. You want to be the guy that people want to give a chance to. He had no business sticking around that long and they continue to give him opportunities. It's an amazing thing to see him still out there playing.
I still play. The only reason this anthology came together is I just had labrum surgery on my shoulder. I play a tournament in Italy every year with the team that I played with in grad school in England, and actually I'm going to go out in May and play a couple games with them in England. But we go to this big tournament in Italy every year and it's the greatest thing in the world. I'm so lucky to be able to get to do this. It's the dream that I didn't know I had. I mean, everyone dreams up playing in the Major Leagues. No one dreams about playing in Italy. I didn't even know that was an option. So when I get to go out there and I'm looking around in Italy playing baseball… this is so awesome.
I had Tommy John during the pandemic as a way to be able to keep playing longer. I tore my UCL when I was in high school and I had a horrible, horrible senior year. I was in so much pain and I just kept playing on it for the next 15 years. And it got to the point where-
How did that work?
Not well! I was pitching on it and it got to the point where I remember the last time before I had the surgery, I was playing in Italy. I think I threw two complete games and I remember sending a picture to my wife and my elbow looked like an apple was sticking out of it. I couldn't bend my arm. I looked like Napoleon, where I had to keep my arm tucked in my shirt. I couldn't bend it. Even riding a bike would hurt, where I couldn't straighten out my arm and put pressure on it. Driving would hurt. So the pandemic’s happening, nothing's going on, if there's going to be one good thing that comes out of this, I might as well get my elbow fixed.
And it is a true miracle, because I don't have the elbow pain anymore. I didn't understand how people used to throw everyday. I had a torn UCL and I was looking at Major Leaguers and like, how are you doing this every day? Aren't you just in incredible pain? No, no, that was just me. Hopefully I'll be able to play, my body's falling apart, I'm going to hopefully play as long as I can. I’m 38. We’ll see how many more surgeries before I'm like, hey, maybe you should actually stop doing this at this point.
Yeah, I'm 38, too, and I just signed back up for a league after 3 years off. In that time my shoulder’s gotten worse, and I play third base, so we’ll see. Baseball's the one sport I've noticed that everyone reaches a point where it's too hard. Like even the pros, there is a point where this game will spit you out.
One of the things I tell the kids at the Tigers camp, I tell my high school kids this, too, play until you're not having fun. As soon as you're not having fun, that's when you really got to think, why do I keep on doing this? It's supposed to be fun. The game of baseball is interesting because, especially on the youth levels, it's really moved toward this very competitive, money-making kind of thing where it's not a fun game. It's like, hey, let's maximize your velocity, go to these tournaments trying to get seen and get on Perfect Game.
Like no, it should be fun. It is a fun game. Playing over in England, people there are there 'cause they love the game. It's really refreshing to go over there and see what that's like as opposed to over here, where I think it's not in a great place, and I don't know how you fix that.
Have you noticed it getting progressively more and more “corporate” as you’ve coached youth baseball??
The league that I grew up playing in in Michigan was a rec league, and everyone played. (Now) they've merged with three other cities to try to get enough people to play, and they've also started this travel league. It's just a shame to see. It's really, really frustrating. I understand the mindset and I'm sure that I would have been one of those kids. I had private pitching lessons growing up. I would go throw in an abandoned… my pitching coach somehow had access to an abandoned drugstore, so we would go throw in an abandoned drug store in the middle of winter in Detroit. I’m sure I would’ve been one of those kids doing these velocity programs. Why wouldn't you if you're serious about the game?
I dread the thought of having a kid that has the same interests as I do, and having to go down to Florida to play in a Perfect Game tournament. For what? I always think that if you're good enough, people will find you. There's actually something to be said about playing less. I played year-round. I quit all my other sports when I got to high school, and I regret that. I just loved the game. I wanted to play. I still do anytime I get a chance. There's something to be said about actually playing less.
Did it ever get to a point where it wasn't fun when you were younger?
That's a good question. My senior year of high school, when I was in all that pain, we were losing games, I didn't like the coach. I was still with my buddies, though. Sam and Bob, who I played with my whole life, were on the team. To be able to play with them and continue to share in that experience them, that meant a lot and that's what got me through that year. But that was tough. At that point I was like, I'll play in college, that's all I really thought about. I didn't really think about anything beyond that. And then to have that UCL…
Looking back, I'm 5’10”, I was probably like 150lbs in high school. I'm a right-handed pitcher. At the most I was in the low 80s for my velocity. That’s not going to get you anywhere. I just didn't know that at the time. I was like, I'm the best pitcher in the city. What else could be out there? We would go play these tournaments in West Virginia, or I remember going to Canada, we’d go to some of these places and we would do OK. And then every now and then we would just get destroyed. There’d be people flying in players to play in these tournaments. That sucked. That wasn't fun.
What is it about baseball that's kept you hooked all this time? If I listen to the whole interview back, I could probably pull 9 different things you mentioned that hooked you.
I think as a kid, it's just that I was good at it. I think that was a big part of it. And then it became the players and buying the baseball cards and it's a community around it. I look at it now and I've really come to realize it's the stories. It is that connection to the past. The Oscars just happened, you look at TV shows and movies and their stories, and they go back years and years, and it's the same with baseball. To be able to talk about Babe Ruth today and see how that's progressed and how they're all kind of connected in the way. I mean, you go back to transactions, that's literally just a recap of the story of what happened with players. even on a personal level with my family and the stories that I have of the people I go to a game with. That's really a big reason why I started The Twin Bill.
I always say, you go to a game and there's 40,000 people there. There's one game that happens, but everyone there has a different story about what happened. And that's the stuff that I'm really drawn to now. It's that history, it’s that connection, that story. It's the way we interact with the game that I think is so unique, specifically to baseball compared to other sports too.
Scott’s a lot like me, except a better baseball player, better looking and he’s played in more countries than me. But we’re the same height, age and have brown hair! Anyways, it was refreshing to hear of someone else who wants to play real baseball until the wheels fall off. I signed up for a wood bat league after 4 years off this summer, so we’ll see how that goes. Last time I returned after a long layoff, my knee was so banged up from diving for ground balls I had to take a couple days off work because I couldn’t push the clutch pedal to shift my car for the commute.
It was also interesting hearing him simultaneously bemoan the state of youth baseball today while also admitting he would’ve been one of those kids with a Perfect Game profile and showcase travel booked year-round. It’s like, I think everyone knows that youth sports is in bad shape because of the parents and adults who’ve mutated it into a minor league system for minors. Money gets poured in, every one wants to peel a few dollars off these all-too-willing parents, the private coaches, travel teams, equipment companies, training facilities… some 10-year-olds are going to have better facilities than the A’s. But one person cannot change this whole system, it’s gotta be a culture shift away from baseball as a business and back to baseball as a sport. Here’s hoping.
The Twin Bill
What sparked you to create The Twin Bill?
I was a journalist right out of college. I have a journalism degree. I had a sports column before I even graduated college, for the Chicago Tribune's Red Eye Edition. It was amazing and I would get to do features. I remember I talked to Juan Pierre, I loved Juan Pierre, and I wrote a story about him playing for both the Cubs and the White Sox. I’d get to do little things like that. And then the paper folded. It's really hard to be a baseball writer. There's a lot of people out there who want to do it. There are so few “real” baseball writer jobs. The New York Times doesn't even have a sports section anymore. They just outsource everything to The Athletic now. It's hard to be a sports journalist these days.
But I realized that there were so many people who want to write about baseball, who have stories about baseball. I got a creative writing masters degree. I felt like, oh, yeah, journalism's really tough, the way to go is writing fiction. That's the way to really make money (note: this was said sarcastically). I was working on a baseball book at the time. It didn't end up getting published. I'm going to revisit it someday. I think I have some ideas how to tweak it.
When the pandemic hit, it was a scary time for everyone where we just didn't know. It's hard to remember five years ago 'cause we collectively just moved on. We just choose not to think about that time. But I remember, it must have been the first day or two, we fled New York City-
Good idea.
My wife and I, our lease was coming up and I was like, this is going to be bad. I was telling her, I think they're going to shut the bridges down like in Batman and we're going to be stuck in here. We don't want to be here in our small little apartment. We moved to where she had grown up in Williamstown, MA, which is a small college town. We moved in there with all of our stuff just haphazardly, and the first thing I wanted to do was watch some baseball stuff. I think it was out of comfort, perhaps. And so I threw on Ken Burns’ Baseball, which I don't think that I had watched the whole thing in one go.
I watched it and I was just enthralled. And she's like, hey, can we watch literally anything else? I ended up getting up early and watching some before she was awake. I felt, man, I bet there's a lot of other people out there who feel this way, who have this deep connection to baseball. We didn't even know if baseball was going to come back that year.
I had this idea. There are people who wanna write. I want to give them a place where they can write about and share their baseball stories. And that's how The Twin Bill started up. I originally was just going to do fiction and essays and we started getting a ton of poetry submissions, I guess we got to have poetry. I don't feel comfortable judging poetry, but all of a sudden, we're getting all these submissions and we got to do this too. It took a life of its own there. There was a lot of interest, a lot of people wanted to be involved. I immediately brought in editors, all from my grad school. It's just one of those serendipitous pandemic things that would not have happened otherwise.
How did you get connected with all the people who submitted work? Even the poetry.
I actually think the thing that we do the best is poetry. Baseball really lends itself to poetry. I started writing poetry because of it. I've had two pieces in the National Baseball Poetry Festival and I'm halfway through writing a book of Babe Ruth haiku. I enjoy it. We put a call for submissions out there and people started submitting. We don't do any advertising now. People will send us stuff, and we get 60 to 100 submissions every quarter. Our acceptance rate is actually shockingly low for something you think is so niche. We get tons and tons of stuff, I'm constantly blown away. I think that the future and the health of The Twin Bill is great.
Is this Early Innings Anthology a natural progression of this whole thing?
I finally figured out how to do print editions. I started doing that in December and I was like, I feel so bad for all these people who we published before we had prints because there is really something special about being able to hold the work. So I wanted to be able to give all the other people from the earlier issues the chance to have something in there. I don't think that people read a lot today. Especially in this kind of writing world, everyone wants to write and no one really wants to read. There's a lot of people out there who send us stuff, and it doesn't necessarily correlate with the amount of people who read what we do.
But to be able to do this for the contributors, it really means a lot to me and I think it's just the beginning for us. We're going to keep going with this print stuff. I've really enjoyed it. It's very rewarding to see. I decided that I was also going to launch a sports book publishing company, .406. I also got this book here, Short Relief, is coming out. So we're going to start printing sports books. There is something about print that's really special and I'm just going to keep rolling with it as long as we can.
You seem confident and sure of your work and the work that's on the site. Your career goes back to before you graduated, 15 years ago or so. You wrote for a huge city newspaper. You wrote for McSweeney's, which some of my friends really like.
What has your career been like learning the ropes and getting through the doubts and developing your voice? Were there any life lessons you got from all your baseball years that might have applied to pushing through, 'cause writing as a main career is something that a lot of people wash out of, just like baseball.
I think I was in 7th grade when Ms. Blatnick selected me for a writing contest that I won. I think I won every writing contest that year. I was like, I can do this. This can be fun. It's fun and not fun. It’s a very strange thing. I wrote for the school newspaper in high school. I got to college, I wasn't going to be a journalism major. Being a history teacher was my original plan. I don't know how sustainable that is, but I think there's a lot about history that applies to baseball and what I try to do in telling stories and seeing how it's all connected.
In college I started writing for the school newspaper. I would do music interviews. I would reach out to musicians that were coming to Chicago and I would interview them before one of the shows and they'd give me tickets to the show. I had a really great professor in college. He was fantastic and he really encouraged me. I remember Bill Clinton was coming to town and I basically ambush interviewed him at his book signing. I waited in line for 6 hours to get an interview with him and I wrote about that, and he's like, that's the type of stuff that people need to do more of: dedicate yourself to getting something and succeed. And that kind of goes back to baseball too.
I go on to the Red Eye and my editor there was really encouraging and let me try stuff. I realized that people don't want just a recap of what happened. They want personality, so I'd always try to make it fun, I try to make it something that you wouldn't get somewhere else. I think that that's one of the traps that people fall into. They see what the big places are doing, the big writers are doing, they try to copy that. That gets you some places, but you gotta try to stand out.
And then you know, you look at McSweeny’s… I think one of the things that baseball really taught me is how to deal with failure. You fail all the time in baseball. In writing, you fail even more. We talked about how my first book didn't get published. I’m trying to pitch a novel right now that's not picking up steam. It's not always going to be success. All you can kind of do is hit the ball as hard as you can and hope that it lands. It doesn't always land. You just got to try to keep hitting the ball hard and that's what it really comes down to.
What's your goal going forward for the year or the next couple years?
With The Twin Bill, I think we'll just keep growing. I don't know what comes after print. It's exciting to see that there has been interest in this. Perhaps it's publishing more, or more often. I've made $0 off of this, it has only cost me money. We set up as a non-profit, which may or may not have been the right thing to do. I want to get the word out. I want people to come and know about us. I want us to be part of the fabric of the game. We love watching games, and if you want to read, you can also read about it here. I think we offer this really unique thing that you don’t see a lot of other places. I would love to have an issue where we have translations, like if we get a bunch of Japanese writers. Down the road I would love to look at doing something like that. I really am very intrigued about the growth of the game and the experiences that people have around the world with the game.
Dang, I was hoping he had the secret on how to make money doing this whole writing thing. I imagine he’s closer to a breakthrough than not, however. When you put in that much work and passion something good will eventually come out of it. Plus there’s some good stuff on that site. I read a few entries. They’re quick to digest, entertaining and in a lot of different writing styles. I haven’t clicked on the poetry page yet, but a Babe Ruth haiku sounds interesting. I’ll try one:
The movie The Babe
Unathletic John Goodman
Was so terrible
That was not easy.
Talking Old Baseball Parks
So you grew up in Detroit, you were after ’84?
I was born in ‘86, so I've never seen a World Series.
You had a lot of lean years growing up.
My dad and I went to the World Series in ‘06. We were at the one game that they won and then they lost all the other ones to the Cardinals, who were a terrible team. Maybe the worst team to ever win the World Series. They were awful. The Tigers played an awful World Series. And then they went back in 2012 against the Giants. Awful. Verlander made some throwing errors and I think Prince Fielder got picked off at third. It was just another terrible, terrible showing.
Last year, I guess they were hot at the right time, and I thought if they had made it past Cleveland they would have beat the Yankees. The Yankees played this very old style baseball and the Tigers were playing this very modern, matchups-based baseball. The Yankees wouldn't have been able to counteract that. I don't think they would beat the Dodgers, I don't think anyone should ever beat the Dodgers going forward. But you just gotta make it that far. That’s not to say this was a good Tigers team because it really wasn't. I still don't think that they're actually trying to win games right now.
Did you ever go to Tiger Stadium?
That's my favorite place in the world.
That's the one park that I would have wanted to see.
It's hard to explain what it was. If you've been to Wrigley, it's very similar 'cause it was double-decked all the way around. We were right on top of the field. At Comerica Park in the upper deck, the last row of Tiger Stadium would be where the first row of the upper deck at Comerica Park is right now.
I loved Tiger Stadium. I have seats from there. I have the little gate that led out to the field. I have that back at home. I was at the last game, I cried my eyes out. I was like 12, something like that. I have dirt, I gave a cup to a police officer and he went out to the pitcher's mound and scooped up some dirt for me. Tiger Stadium was a really special place. The neighborhood where it was is one of the very few thriving neighborhoods of the city right now. Man, if the ballpark was still there, what would this be like? It’d just be a completely different area.
Comerica Park’s fine. I think they messed up a lot when they built it. The seats aren't very good and there's no shade anywhere. A beautiful skyline view, and there's a Ferris wheel if you're not into baseball. Tiger Stadium was one of those special places and it’s now lost and it's a shame. It's grown on me over the years. I will have gone to so many more games in my life at Comerica Park than I will have at Tiger Stadium. The seats are way worse, I mean it's so great being up close to the game and being able to hear the crack- I remember going when McGwire was playing there, and because it was enclosed, double deck all the way around, the ball off of McGwire’s bat you just hear it ring throughout the ballpark. And you can get right up close to these players 'cause it was built in 1912. You’d go down there for autographs and you were 10 feet away from home plate.
It's the intangibles you lose, too. My grandfather went there, generations went there. Was it the prettiest place? No. Were the bathrooms a nightmare? Of course. You can't recreate that, which is why I'm so grateful that we still have Wrigley and we still have Fenway. And the next oldest is Dodger Stadium. That's in the 60s.
I frankly think that a lot of the new ballparks, those like post-2000 ballparks, are pretty much all the same. There very few ones that really stand out to me. Nationals Park, like, did they even try to do anything there? Like, hey, here's a ballpark. They're all just kind of built the same now. Maybe they’ll have, here's our quirk, our little thing. There's no soul in a lot of these places. New Yankee Stadium doesn't have much of a soul. After the renovations in the mid 70s, it wasn't really even the same ballpark but you still felt something special about going there. New Yankee Stadium, you still feel the same way, like you're at Yankee Stadium and this is a special thing. But it's just so corporate and so concrete and cold. I don't think the Steinbrenner's particularly feel very nostalgic for it, but I know a lot of New Yorkers really do, and they they're still looking for that connection with the new ballpark too.
So you give tours of Yankee Stadium? The new one? Wait, obviously the old one's gone.
I got hired right before the pandemic. It was a dream of mine to sign a contract with the Yankees. I always say it is the best job in the world besides actually being on the field. I get to talk about baseball. I get to hold Babe Ruth's bat. There's so many cool little things, and one of the best things is, I come into the stadium sometimes, 11 in the morning, I remember getting in there early last year and I saw Freddie Freeman down on the field just playing Wiffleball with his kids. All these little moments that people don't get to see. Every time I walk through the great hall of Yankee Stadium and it's empty and I have the place to myself, it's almost a giddy feeling. I can't believe I'm doing this right now, this is the coolest thing in the world.
Is there anything about Yankee Stadium that you're most proud to show or talk about on the tours?
Monument Park is just a special place in baseball in America. People also don't realize that we have an incredible Hall of Fame, Cooperstown-caliber museum. We have the bat Babe Ruth used to hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium, jerseys, all sorts of incredible stuff that you would expect to see in Cooperstown, we have it here at the stadium. I love taking people there. To me, it's the stories behind the items and it connects you to the game even more when you get to see them and sometimes even hold them. We have a special tour where you get to come in and hold items. You put your latex gloves on and you get to hold Babe Ruth’s bat. It gets really close to the game and I love seeing people connect with. I always have kids, or even adult sometimes, who we give them the latex gloves to hold Babe Ruth’s bat, like I want to keep these, they touched Babe Ruth’s bat, I want to get these framed. That is so cool to see that that it means so much to these people.
I never got to go to Tiger Stadium. If I had to pick three stadiums from the past to visit, I’d pick Tiger Stadium, Ebbets Field and Crosley Field. But it was nice to hear someone else who misses the old architecture with upper decks that you could see baseball from. Today’s stadiums, when we sat upper deck at most of our visits on our road trip, there were games where it felt like we were at the rim of the Grand Canyon and sounds of the game would just echo up occasionally to remind us baseball was being played somewhere down there.
I got to sit in roughly the same spots in both the old and new Yankee Stadiums, and you really are much further removed in the new one. Here’s a couple pics from the old one in 2006 from behind home:
The upper deck is steep and has great views even in the nosebleeds. When you climb up and then sit in your seat, there’s this feeling that you really are on top of the plate. Now, look at a similar seat at the new stadium where they’ve carved the upper deck into two levels with a walkway, plus the added level of luxury suites below that push you even further from the field:
I felt a lot of what Scott said about the new stadiums. Some are masterpieces, some are just copying what works somewhere else and adding like a slide or unique statue and calling it your own. Part of it is probably these stadiums aren’t old enough to be broken in yet. It takes a while, like a new stiff leather glove. A generation or two need to have grown up there to really season the place with stories and a personality.
I want to thank Scott for chatting as he continues to raise awareness of The Twin Bill and the new print editions. And also a huge thank you to
and for recommending me to him.I think there’s a lot more people like Scott, true baseball lovers, than most people would think. We just need to be better at embracing fans and people like that instead of continually trying to be the NFL and drum up cheap debate and conversation 24/7/365. Baseball is a slower sport with rewarding payoffs for your patience. It’s a slow burn and becoming a fan isn’t an overnight thing, but there’s a part of baseball for everyone. And if you’re a literary fanatic like my sister is, maybe The Twin Bill is the perfect way to get hooked.
What a great interview - thanks for sharing this