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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Happy birthday, Mr. Prine. Miss you. Thanks for this perfect album, and all the other perfect ones, too.

The cover of John Prine's self-titled debut album from 1971, featuring him sitting on a bale of hay. There's a guitar propped up in the corner. You get the sense that there's a whiff of cigarette smoke as well as, you know, other things.

Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Months ago, for the eldest's bday, we bought her tickets to night 2 of Phoebe Bridgers' Toronto shows, and she said she'd take me with her. Last night was the night, and as with all dates on the tour it was gloriously phone free. Amazing show! The sense of community inside that arena was remarkable.

A young white woman with pink and teal hair and a middle-aged white man with brown hair and glasses stand together smiling in front of a digital signboard reading PHOEBE BRIDGERS / THE LOST TOUR 2026 / LET'S GET LOST, TORONTO

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Reading this tonight while keeping half an eye on PHI-ATL. Thinking later I'll watch ep. 1 of East of Eden. Is this self-care? I dunno.

The cover of "Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life and Untimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team That Gave Birth to Modern Baseball," by Burt Solomon

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Received copies of the anniversary edition of my first baseball book, The Utility of Boredom. Long in the tooth but looking trim and spry in a new outfit (redesigned cover) and fresh haircut (new intro by me). Also: French flaps! Available from @invisibooks.bsky.social wherever you get books.

The cover of a book entitled THE UTILITY OF BOREDOM: BASEBALL ESSAYS (Tenth Anniversary Edition), by Andrew Forbes. The cover is a bright yellowy gold and features an illustration of a baseball player in a green uniform.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Last (in person) game of the year for me. Roof open, sun blazing, Max on the bump, Jays up heading into the late innings. Here with my dad. Not a bad afternoon.

The field at the Rogers Centre in bright sunshine.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Joey Votto is such a Canadian boy and I love it so much.

An instagram post from former National League MVP and Torontonian Joey Votto showing a McCain Deep'n Delicious chocolate cake with a single candle in it, which our boy enjoyed on his 43rd birthday.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Returned one more (last?) time to Halfway Lake PP, reunited with the eldest, enjoyed a fire, then a spectacular starry night, slept like a baby through the cool, still night in a new tent, woke early to see the mist rising off the placid water, packed up and drove back to the Kawarthas.

A line of trees is reflected in the calm water of Raven Lake in Halfway Lake Provincial Park near Cartier, Ontario. The sky is soft and dim, barely lit by the rising sun, while a skim of mist floats atop the water.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

More from yesterday’s wild one at Nat Bailey in Van. C’s were up 13-4 after 4 innings, but Spokane kept chipping away. Tied it in the 8th and plated 1 in the 10th. Van tied it in B10, and with winning run on 3rd the Spokane RP balked. Walk! Off! Balk! Amazing afternoon. Baseball is so ridiculous.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Hello from Nat Bailey Stadium in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, where the Canadians are entertaining Spokane. What a gorgeous park.

The exterior of the home plate grandstand at Nat Bailey Stadium in Vancouver.

The field at Nat Bailey as seen from the covered grandstand.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Royal Athletic Park in Victoria, home of the HarbourCats of the West Coast League. Also hosts soccer, football, etc. Season's wrapped up so I still haven't seen a game here, but I'll rectify that one day. Current structure completed in 1967 but they've been playing ball on the site since ~1908.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Ah yes, how pleasant it is to take the wee tots to Ye Olde Tyme Candy Shoppe for some delectable treats

The Olde Tyme Candy Shoppe in Victoria, BC, with graffiti on the wall that reads FUCK YOU MISERY PEOPLE

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I'm in Victoria, BC, to see my kid off as he embarks on a ten-day voyage aboard a 111-foot square rigged schooner. While I'm here I'm visiting my brother, and my sister came in from Calgary with her family, too, so we're having a big, fun, messy, chaotic time. Love and adventure. Life is good!

Me and my son standing in front of a tall ship in bright sunshine.

The tall ship in question: the Pacific Swift. It's moored alongside a wooden dock, masts bare.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Nothing but joy at the ballpark this week.

Fans raise their hands and cheer while singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at the SkyDome in Toronto.

Me and my dad smile for the camera while sporting Toronto Blue Jays gear.

Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk tosses a baseball while warming up in the outfield before a game against the New York Yankees.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Back in the saddle (sticky plastic seat)

Interior shot of the Rogers Centre in Toronto ahead of tonight's Blue Jays-Red Sox game.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I turned 50 last week (awesome, highly recommend) and I'm fortunate to have people in my life who want to celebrate. My peerless partner and our 2 sons made me delicious dinner of steak & pepper tacos and a St. Louis butter cake. Next night I had a beer with a good friend, went to a book launch. 1/X

A geyser of sparks shoot from a tube stuck into warm, gooey, delicious pretzel bites drizzled with salted caramel and white frosting, all contained in a fun little paper cup with colourful diamond decorations printed on it. A pair of gold candles, one in the shape of a 5, the other a 0, are also stuck in there, burning with little happy flames. This is all sitting on a table strewn with colourful decorations, little paper discs, etc. It's a party!

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

My kid jokes that I've become an old man when it comes to -- well, everything. But specifically when it comes to my phone. Opening the wrong app, backwards facing camera when I want the other one, whatever. This won't help. THIS is the photo I *meant* to post from the Rog last night.

Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. takes a pitch in the first inning of a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox played at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. The stands are full, and a salmon colored sky as well as some high-rise buildings are visible above the rim of the stadium.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Hello from the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr bats in a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Enjoying The Blue Jays Way doc series on Sportsnet, I just wish they didn't use what looks an awful lot like AI slop. Correct me if I'm wrong, @sportsnetpr.bsky.social

A seemingly AI-generated cartoon image of seven baseball players in a courtroom being presided over by Dave Winfield in a judge's robe.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Thought I'd watch a bit of Koshien tournament action while sipping my coffee.

A screen ddisplays the crowd at a high school baseball game in Japan. Fans dressed in matching white baseball uniforms cheer and wave green plastic cones. The screen is 1/3 obscured by the silhouette of a cat.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Going to the bank with my jar full of pennies to get a money order to put in an envelope to send away to Tualatin, Oregon to get me the one and only Authentic Major League Baseball Cap for twelve dollars and ninety-five cents American.

An ad in the October 25, 1980 issue of The Sporting News says "Now you can wear the on and only authentic Major League Baseball cap / All 26 teams available / $12.95 / Allow 6 weeks for delivery," and includes an address in Oregon for the New Era Western company, an affiliate of New Era Cap Co.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Lakeside, looking over proofs of the 10th anniversary edition of The Utility of Boredom. I've written a new introduction and we've done a bit of tidying on the original text. New cover, too. It'll be available from @invisibooks.bsky.social wherever you get books October 13th.

A laptop on a table next to a beer can and a sweating cup. Visible on the laptop's screen is the title page of The Utility of Boredom: Baseball Essays by Andrew Forbes. A thick screen of trees behind the table obscures a lake.

Said title page, made bigger and clearer.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Cape Breton is not amazing and the views are unspectacular and the hikes aren't magical and the food isn't delicious and the beaches aren't gorgeous and the people aren't friendly and we didn't have the best time and you definitely should not go there.

God-rays spill out of clouds and onto the surface of the ocean.

A waterfall on a hike... somewhere in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Two teenage boys (my sons), me (a middle-aged man), and a lovely woman (my wife) smile into the camera in a selfie taken on the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton.

A moody photo taken at dusk of a saltbox house and a flagpole flying the Acadian flag at Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

25 yrs ago I spent a sunny autumn afternoon in a cafe a few blocks from our 1st apartment reading a stack of magazines. It was a great pleasure then and a perfect memory now. I hope he hangs onto this moment like that, but I've learned that trying to curate your kids' memories is a fool's errand.

My 16 year old son swings in a hammock reading "The Wager" by David Grann. Behind him the sun shines on green grass and steep forested hillsides. Just out of frame the waves of the Gulf of St. Lawrence crash onto a rocky shore.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Goodnight from Meat Cove, Cape Breton.

Sunset over the ocean and an outcropping of rock at the northernmost settlement in Nova Scotia, Canada.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Roadside/oceanfront oysters with my buddy John on the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton. Delicious.

Two men tilt oyster shells to their mouths and slurp back the slippery, briny goodness held therein. The ocean is visible in the background.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Watched some of Dylan Cease's gem in a motel room in Antigonish, NS. Baseball, man.

A small TV hung on a wall in a motel room shows a baseball game.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Canoe Cove, PEI, midnight. I won't be taking calls for a couple of weeks. [photo by my b-i-l]

A bright half moon sits low over the horizon, shining off the surface of the ocean. Two people are visible in silhouette on the beach in the foreground. Stars shine in the evening sky overhead.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

To paraphrase Jim Shepard, handcraftedness justifies itself as an expression of intimacy with the world.

My teenage sons hard at work building bookshelves. They stand beneath an apple tree, one working an electric hand planer over the surface of a 2" x 10" plank of pine lumber clamped to a work bench. The plank disappears from the frame at bottom left, but measures about six feet in length. The other young man stands by, his foot bracing the work bench's base, one hand on his knee, the other keeping the planer's cord out of harm's way.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Canada Day thunderstorm blackout improvised dinner.

A barbecue grill with a frying pan full of tater tots, a basket of grilling vegetables, a foul packet containing a filet of salmon, and a sheet pan of about a dozen breaded fish sticks.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Baseball is weird, and is also the best.

A notification on my phone that reads:

7:20 p.m.

Mets @ Blue Jays

George Springer triples in the bottom of the 1st, George Springer scores. The Blue Jays now lead the Mets, 1-0.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

I get a steady trickle of those AI-generated emails promising to boost my book’s sales/reviews, or secure me access to giant book clubs, and I delete them as soon as they hit my inbox. Sometimes they credit me with writing someone else’s book, but this is something new… 1/4

An email reading:

Hello Andrew Forbes,

What stands out in The Lost Diamonds of the Frontier Leagues is how the baseball diamond stops being a sporting structure and becomes a kind of temporary civic architecture something communities built, inhabited, and eventually let return to the landscape.

The most powerful thread is the way these fields carry layered biographies: not just of players, but of towns shaped by industry cycles, migration, and the slow erosion of economic certainty. Each diamond feels less like a venue and more like a residue of collective attention where labor, leisure, and local identity briefly overlapped before dispersing again into geography.

There is also a quiet tension running through the work between visibility and disappearance. Big-league history tends to preserve itself through records and myth, but these frontier leagues survive differently through weathered ground, partial memory, and the stories that remain unarchived. That makes the narrative feel less like sports history and more like cultural archaeology.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

BEST Father's Day weekend. Took a jog up north to Halfway Lake PP, where the eldest child works. Hiked, swam, got eaten alive by mosquitoes. Waterfalls, moose scat (though no moose seen), possible Eastern wolf sighting, ravens the size of DC-3s. Good times with the best family. I'm a fortunate man.

Three people are seen from behind hiking through a forest, with ferns, birch trees, and leaf-covered ground. A vertical rock wall rises to their left.

A waterfall on a river, white water spilling over rocks, with dense green vegetation on either side, and a blue sky with fluffy white clouds overhead.

A family selfie featuring me, my two teenage sons, my wife, and my 19 year-old daughter. We're in the woods, standing in front of a camping trailer.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Hello from Arnold Anderson Stadium, located in Cockshutt Park, home of the Brantford Red Sox. The Hamilton Cardinals are in town this afternoon. It's a hot one. This is the 9th and final stop on my CBL odyssey, and I think I can now remark on the complete absence of a single raindrop. I'm 9 for 9.

The back of the grandstand at Arnold Anderson Stadium, redeemed with a sign indicating it as the home of the Brantford Red Sox, and with a long list of the club's pennants and titles.

The baseball diamond at the stadium, with some red seats visible behind home plate.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

If you've asking yourself, "Should I go to a ballgame in London?" I'm here to give you the nudge that you need.

The grandstand of Labatt Park backlit by the setting sun.

The baseball field at Labatt Memorial Park in London, Ontario in the twilight, its light towers illuminated, and tall buildings visible in the distance.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Hello from Labatt Memorial Park, situated at the fork of the Thames River in London, Ontario. The field is the "World's Oldest Baseball Grounds," as the sign has it. Est. 1877. Tonight the Welland Jackfish are in town to face the Majors. Lovely evening, unsurpassed setting. Like a postcard.

The covered grandstand at Labatt Park in London, a small baseball stadium with a mix of fold down seats and aluminum benches. We're looking at it from the stands along the right field line. The roof of the main grandstand has a large screen atop it to protect the houses huddled close behind the park.

The same park as viewed from the stands behind home plate, just towards first base. The seats are in shaded darkness while the field is brilliant green below a blue sky. Beyond the outfield fence there is a screen of mature trees, and in the background several highrise buildings.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Some U22 ball on a gorgeous Thursday evening, Peterborough Tigers tangling with the Kendal Eagles, at historic Riverside Park in Peterborough.

Bleachers, backstop, ball field, and big, beautiful sunset.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Remember a few weeks ago when everyone became aware of the Cdn Baseball League because Toronto had signed a former NL All-Star? And he homered twice in his debut? Let's check in to see how things are going... They haven't won since. He has 1 more HR. They're in last place. And last night...

Box score of a baseball game showing the final score:

Toronto - 1
Hamilton - 23

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Quick stop before I dash home: George Taylor Field in St. Catharines, fka Community Park, home of the NY-Penn Lg Stompers, 1986-99. Jays affiliate. Now hosts uni, collegiate summer lg, etc. Also pictured: the author in Stompers fauxback cap, picked up at the Welland Jackfish game last night.

A baseball park viewed from the outfield, the stands a combination of blue bucket seats and aluminum benches.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Hello from Welland Stadium, home of the Welland Jackfish, who are all set to entertain the Brantford Red Sox. It's Umpire Appreciation Night AND $5 tallboy night. Should be fun.

The sun drenched baseball field of Welland Stadium, framed by the ballpark itself, and overseen by a peerless blue sky.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

I wish you could smell this lilac bush right now.

Purple and white lilac blossoms and bright green leaves are lit from behind by a golden late afternoon sun.

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Andrew Forbes @utilityofboredom.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Perfect weekend? Hit the road, took in 2 ballgames, bought a cap (pictured), drove home, did some gardening, made fish and chips for the family and in-laws, now sitting outside on a perfect evening, peonies about to bloom, listening to Cubs-Cardinals, just saw the first junebug of the season.

Me, a white guy, wearing a denim shirt, glasses, and a Chatham-Kent Barnstormers baseball cap, standing against a wooden panel hung on a brick wall, in warm lamplight.

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