#park effects

i know this doesn't count bc they're wearing the wrong colours and mack has batting gloves but in my heart this is willmack in my baseball au. sunkissed (slightly burnt) and watching each other from the dugout and all. the hazy heat of late august early september baseball. mismatched hats and jerseys that aren't stained yet and baby fat on their cheeks and all the bigs in front of them. summer evenings suspended in time that taste like redbull mixed with orange juice. an entire stadium just for them, standing 60 feet 6 inches apart and looking at the grandstands imagining a crowd there to watch them make magic

I can’t wait to reread it this summer during peak baseball enjoying time

learned what park effects and park factors are, bryce miller pitching lore?, fate of rsox franchise faces, and more baseball team dynamics!!

re: ‘realistically, 7 years later, he probably gets shipped out to a california team’ hmmm i wonder who’s also currently playing for a team in california. (matching ws rings they use to propose to each other in their late 30s/j)

oooo that last scene!!!!! i was imagining very hard and have a lot of thoughts!!! lots of directions we could go with this.

hmmmm in my mind, mack has already thrown a splitter to will like first time they faced off. mack’s not gonna wait till game 7, top of the 9th, to throw him that splitter. (actually, idk what mack would and should do for the first pitch) (maybe throw the fastball but it ends up rising justtttt a bit outside the top of the zone for a ball. maybe a checked swing or a flinch from will but doesn’t chase) (also a lottttt of appreciation for the mental game between the batter and the pitcher. and ig by extension the catcher too)

calling back to your point, to be loved is to be known and they love each other, therefore i think will can hit any pitch mack throws. hm. the only one he doesn’t reallyyyy know (in person) is the change up (has seen all the clips of mack’s changeup and already read all the analysis on it), i think he’s able to at least chip it foul.

regardless, i imagine it goes to full count (or more with a couple hit foul) and will hits either a nasty ground ball the finds the gap (on a pitch most would strikeout on) for an rbi single or a flyball double just short of a home run. most action in the game so far. either way, will still wins the match up against mack and shows that will still knows and loves him. mack is anxious and worried that it’ll cost his team the title, but is also to some degree settled and in awe that will knows him so well. ultimately, i think rsox should still lose in the bot 9th due to some infield error or an overturned call (imo some of the worst ways to lose cuz it’s so heartbreaking and anti-climatic), because even tho mack ‘lost’ to will, it’s a team sport and they simply just have the better team.

to add another layer to it!! even with the lead from will, they don’t have control of the game. part of the reason rsox lose is cuz they started playing desperate and are making mistakes they don’t usually make. starting with mr. nonchalant will himself. he wouldn’t verbalize it ever, but there will be signs that he’s getting desperate.

or!! to tie it into park factors, the walk-off home run was only a home run because it was at dodger stadium and not the infamous green monster of fenway park.

throw in some looming end of summer and threat of the offseason too while i’m at it.

anyways, that’s what i imagined, but you probably have something better than whatever i came up with just now

i'm really so happy to hear that you like it! i can be kind of an overplanner, i'm a pretty slow writer because i get hung up on the curtains aren't just blue details, so it means a lot when the little things feel important or interesting. i just love baseball a lot :)

if you follow me you WILL learn about bryce miller i will shove him down your throat over and over again he's my goat

psychological torture is mack checking 2nd in his wind up and getting a glimpse of will's splits against him on the jumbo LOL and i like the thought of will eating pitches off mack so much so that mack starts to slip, that would piss him off so bad. mack gives up one (1) hit, one (1) rbi to silver slugger finalist will smith red sox and it raises his era to like 0.98 and he immediately crashes out about it and they call a mound visit

i love the thought of the dodgers walking off the rsox cus of a left center homer that wouldn't clear the monster that's soooooo shades of 2018 game 3… imagine if it's extras too. mack pitched last game and they brought him in for the 13th

rest assured I feel similarly but I wouldn’t want to take credit for someone else’s beautiful mind. I actually did think about that when reading your fic, why Mack was made a dodger specifically. obviously it’s a fic but wondering if you had a specific thought process when making that decision and even the decision to have them both be red sox. There are a few other options I guess connected to “real life” like giants for the bay area connection, white sox for the comiskey connection, even jays for the canada connection or mariners bc some of the people I know from van or western canada prefer the mariners cuz they’re close and it’s part of their anti toronto agenda. Perfect fic obviously but wondering if you considered anything else or if it was always going to be this way

- yanks anon

while i was writing park effects, i knew i wanted to keep the culture the same for each team. i'm coming to hrpf being very intimately familiar with all the mlb teams, their fanbases, the way they currently play, their history since 2015 (when i started watching), etc etc. and i wanted to reflect that in my writing. park effects is really born from my desire to ramble abt what i love. i wanted mack on a team that gets a lot of attention/flak for being elite, big spenders with more talent than they know how to develop with toxic locker room culture and i was torn between yankees, dodgers, and astros. i picked dodgers in the end because i liked the physical distance (mirrors their irl lives) but if yankees and rox were diff divisions i would've gone for yankees. i know boston is doing pretty good rn but they've been HARD to watch since like the 2010s. contrasts well with the shiny money dodgers

also, park effects was Really inspired by the devers trade and roman anthony's call up + subsequent extension. i keep tabs on rox because my cousins are huge rox fans, and seeing their fo try their shot at making a franchise superstar out of a player who's universally liked oops jarren duran made my brain worms go off. i also put them both in boston because the baseball beanpot plays at fenway and i really liked the idea of writing them both (moreso will) coming back to their roots, their starting place, with new eyes and a new life. fenway is a holy experience for baseball fans esp new england ones even if the ballpark isn't that well designed. tho this got scrapped from the outline in the end

the core theme of the fic is homecoming, what it means to move homes, have a home, find home, etc. i think it really works well with willmack because will has such a solid sense of home, that mack never will due to constantly moving, spending more time at camps than at home, rick coming to the states, etc. so i felt it was fitting for mack to never get to "go back" to sf or seattle. he's a giants fan tho cos irl he's a warriors fan so it pairs well, and also i wanted to sneak 2855 lol.

But either way the concept of them having a World Series win but debating whether they even deserve it is such an interesting concept. Since they always dreamed of doing it together with the Red Sox (which both are actively tryna get Mack too), but for them to just coast along with the dodgers to win a World Series and just tryna deal with “we won, but WE didn’t win”

-Dodger anon

mack would definitely get a couple of batters but for Fic Narrative Purposes i feel like he'd barely see half an inning, too young without any of the trust to play in a do or die game

i love the idea of like. the dissatisfaction of a win. one of my favorite blue jays kevin kiermaier was traded to the dodgers and bench warmed last year's world series, and he retired after that first and only championship win for him. he came back to coach for the jays too. and narratively i think about that all the time, what it's like to be a good player but the worst on a great team, or a good player the best on a terrible team. both of them would be torture for someone like mack, but at least irl he gets to do it with friends irl. in my universe, i shoved him into a terrible world of limbo LOL

one of my favourite things about sports is this concept of deserving. as a dodgers fan i'm sure you heard that argument a lot after 2020, did you deserve to call yourself champions, etc. especially mack, struggling with the idea of whether or not he deserves his place as a dodger, and also did he deserve to leave boston, it's this constant grapple between "i want it" and "i'm not allowed it (yet)".

-Dodger anon

alright enough of your dodgers propaganda come on. park effects!will is forever a red sox he's destined to have his number above the grandstand. mack will end up back on the red sox and he'll put up aroldis chapman level numbers and they'll get their rings together in boston in the future of that au i'm the writer so i get the final say!!

i know you wrote it ages ago but just wanted to say something

i love getting asks so this is great :) thank you so much for enjoying it! and also i hope you keep saying something to every fic author you read from even if they wrote it ages ago bc we always care no matter how old. park effects isn't even a year old yet!

thanks so much for enjoying my fic!! mel nyangle has actually recommended that book to me but i never got around to reading it. maybe this summer! i do have a counter recommendation to you tho, the unwritten rules series by kd casey is my all time favourite romance series just bc it's some of the best sports writing i've ever read and the romance is great too. worth checking out!