#parallel parking

to be completely transparent, i have a lot of mixed opinions coming back to this fic. it was my first foray into hockey rpf, and i was writing it with the kind of giddy excitement you get when you discover a new hobby for the first time. nothing will change how much i enjoyed thinking about it and piecing it together when i first opened the doc

looking back on it now, there's so much i would change haha. i think i have a firmer understanding of how i like to write willmack, and a better grasp on hockey fandom perceptions (and therefore, a better grasp on how i would translate hockey into baseball). i don't think it's a bad fic by any means, but i do think it's rough around the edges

also park effects is the term for the impact of every baseball park's unique features on a player's stats, which i thought was a fun title because mack gets traded to a different park. different park effects impact his relationship with himself and will. i'm not sure if i'll ever finish the sequel (it's half written and sitting in my drive to collect dust) but it's titled park factors, which are the actual features (factors) of each park that make it different. park factors cause park effects. the series is called parallel parking bc they both have the word park in them lol

It’s almost impossible to make out the flick of his fingers in the dark without field lights, if Mack wasn’t used to squinting at his signs back in Salem, when the sun set at five and the power blew out for half their games and everyone still hated the PitchCom.

like a lot of other baseball fans, i have a habit of romanticising old baseball, especially with a-ball teams. there's something nostalgic thinking about baby mack throwing his entire body into a pitch because he doesn't know how to regulate his starts, baby will painting his nails neon blue, simmering new england summer evenings. i almost wish i had written this fic more a-ball adjacent, because something that bothers me upon looking back on it is that i made them unrealistically young for the majors??? lol

to your point about nostalgic summers, that's exactly what i was going for. i really love late season baseball, right around the time where non-contending teams start to get eliminated, when the sun sets a little earlier and the weather gets a little grosser and everyone's waiting for the next big thing. a checked swing if you will

september is a transient time period for most people, kids going back to school and adults coming back from their last summer trips and sports seasons shifting. septembers keep getting hotter. i love late september fireflies, they're always very pretty in the county park. summer has a sound, yk, cicadas are definitely part of that sound but there's even more layers to that hum. and it's definitely humming at fenway for the last games of the season

“What do you think?” Mack asks once he drops his leg down. “I changed the grip a bit, it’s sort of like a fork but it doesn’t blister and I like the way it feels on my fingers. I still think it could be a good whiff pitch.”  Will shakes out his catching hand. “Crazy velo,” he says thoughtfully, and Mack almost throws his glove at him. Everything’s always crazy with Will: “you’re crazy”, “shit’s crazy”, lol crazy, one more “that’s crazy” could send Mack to an early grave. It’s only a few steps off from his dad’s endless “needs more work”s. 

i think i've mentioned this before, but i wrote mack's splitter like bryce miller's splitter, because i love that pitch dearly, and bryce started off being able to hurl fastballs like he was trying to decapitate people, and the rest of his stuff suffered as a result of him prioritising his 4 seamer. mack's pitching struggles was very much based off him

i think will's nonchalance tends to go underexplored in willmack fic. will's kind of just a guy. mack is intelligent, articulate, a bit overemotional, but otherwise a very full personality, but will is kinda just some guy more often than he's the will that the fandom perceives. i liked writing that just-some-guy-isms in this fic, it felt more natural to me. and there's an epidemic of saying "yo that's crazy" that even i can't shake off. everyone be saying shit is crazy

[Mack’s] mouth tastes bitter as he says, “They’re gonna move me to the bullpen.” Speaking it aloud feels like snipping the butcher’s twine holding his body together at the knot, unravelling all his muscles into a mess. There’s nothing else holding him up other than his bones, which ache from his last start, his move, his five years of tearing apart his ligaments bit by bit. Mack knows he’s only in LA to fill holes, but sounding it out makes it weigh on his shoulders ten times heavier.

he's kind of roki sasaki here now that i think about it. or maybe to use a beloved jay of mine, louie varland? i imagined mack becomes an elite closer, probably best in the game, but there's always the stigma that relievers are failed starters and mack irl is the kind of guy who pushes himself to play every minute and then some, so a demotion to 1-2 innings per game would weigh on him heavier than being the 5th (or 6th, or piggyback) starter imo

“Your four-seamer speed isn’t as sustainable as you think it is, okay? Happy?” he huffs, and suddenly it’s all tumbling out of him at once, “Your cutter doesn’t get enough movement, you’ve been overusing your sinker since Double-A, you Google yourself too much, you don’t season your food enough, you snore, and whatever the hell you just threw at me would be a fucking beauty if you were half as confident in it as you are about your fantasy hockey team.”

it's kind of funny that i gave mack a 4 seamer and a 2 seamer (sinker), i didn't even consciously think about that. he's lowk primed for closing, closers looooove having a ff and a si

athletes google themselves all the time, but since there's so many stats and so much data that goes into tracking baseball, i always imagined that mack would get even more obsessive over it. he gets to google every single detail about himself and his performances and they're all available online down to the millimeter measurements

there's a lot of reasons why battery ships are compelling, but to me, one of the prime reasons is because catchers catch for the whole pitching staff, but pitchers only throw to one guy. pitchers with personal catchers? that shit goes DEEP. mack gets a rush from the criticism because it's a reminder that will is paying attention to him enough to isolate his individual issues even though he catches the whole rsox staff. also i think mack gets high on constructive criticism. to be loved is to be known

Will pats the ground beside him and instead of laying down, Mack sits with his knees at his chest. Unbothered, Will turns to look at the sky, the North Star the only one bright enough to shine back.

levels are really important to me in my writing because i tend to visualise my scenes pretty intently. coming from a theatre background, i always try to block my dialogue-heavy scenes with intention put into the levels. i don't like visualising a scene where the two characters are facing each other directly and speaking to each other at the same height, because it feels stiff. they either have to be different elevations, or there has to be some furniture/structure around them that they can lean on or be distracted by, or both people are moving/doing something while talking. personal thing lol

“Do you think the Dodgers traded three top one hundred prospects for shits and giggles?”

ironically yes the dodgers do this all the fucking time. they trade away their prospects like candy for shiny new toys and they still have one of the best prospect pools/development pipelines in the majors. it actually infuriates me

“I know I’m good, it’s just—the confidence thing. You’re the reason why. When you’re the one behind—when you were the one—fuck.” Mack drops his leg and hunches over to pick at the grass. “I trusted you. I didn’t need to think because I trusted you to think for me. Sometimes I feel like a part of you was in my brain, telling me what to do, what angle to level my arm at, how hard I should push my fingers.”

there's dom/sub castles everywhere for those with the eyes to see...

i sort of imagined that part of the reason why mack struggles to gel with other catchers is because he shakes everyone off except will, he never shakes will off. there was a part of me that was compelled to make mack call his own pitches, but meta-wise i don't think that's how i perceive mack. he likes taking initiative and grappling with his own talent for sure, but i think in the end he always seeks affirmation, being told he's doing a good job. and when he calls his own pitches, he loses that satisfaction of getting an a+ in following directions. it also makes his losses weigh so much more on his own failure

There’s never been a second where [Mack]’s looked at Will and thought anything other than he’s never leaving Boston. It’s more than the fact that he’s the homegrown, hometown hero Boston hasn’t seen for generations: it’s the fact that he belongs in red, more than he’s belonged anywhere else, more than Mack’s belonged anywhere else. 

rsox have such a history of trading away their franchise faces, and that sort of sat as the foundation of my fic. it was really heavily inspired by romcelo, and the devers (and bogaerts/betts) trade at large. baseball goes through guys so much more than hockey, it's rare to find a franchise guy and even rarer to hold onto them. the fact that the rsox have developed so many franchise guys and cut them loose is bittersweet to me

like if i were to be realistic about this universe, will signs an eight year contract with boston and then 7 years, 2 silver sluggers, 4 ASG, and 1 pennant later, he probably gets shipped out to a california team like the rest of them

Will pushes himself up to his feet now, mouth set into a determined line. “We’re still getting to the World Series together,” he declares, “Better than great—fucking legendary.” His voice carries the conviction of someone on a team that isn’t in the middle of a rebuild, sellers at the deadline until the very last minute, clawing and grasping for the last wild card spot with bloody fingers.

now close your eyes and imagine this:

late october, balmy socal autumn heat. it shouldn't be as warm and muggy as it is, but of course it's warm and muggy because it's los angeles which is always warm and muggy at the wrong time of year. every seat in dodger stadium is packed, the sky is still orange from the sunset, the field is that artificial green you only get from overusing sprinklers

top of the 9th, 4-4, game 7. soft contact all game, not a lot of action. whole stadium is holding their breath, waiting for the needle drop

will comes up, heart of the order at the plate now, with 2 outs and runners on the corners. shaking his arms out, dusting off desert sand from his reds, gripping his bat too tight

mack's already on the mound. they played his corny ass closer entrance fifteen minutes ago. he can't find the zone, but his innings are always like this. can't watch celebrini close without losing a few years off your life. he lives on the edge, or whatever they're saying on reddit

picks up the rosin bag, shakes off his hands. runs his fingers over the seams of the ball, looks at will 60 feet away, as familiar of a sight as the palm of his hand. he's a righty, and mack fucking destroys righties, but will demolishes offspeed pitches. 6 career home runs at dodger stadium

and mack's just staring at him, watching him step into the box, watching his fingers readjust around the bat, and in his ear, he hears the call for a fastball, but in his chest he hears the call for a splitter

and then he throws a...