Self Care

Mac Miller passed away on September 7, 2018. Image by Christaan Felber.

Swimming has been on repeat for the past two weeks. It’s not just because Mac Miller’s passing made me feel inexplicable grief, I truly believe it’s a great album front-to-back. It has a tangible emotional depth. Each song is its own crucial piece of the conversation, which many took as Mac saying that he was okay. There are references to his addiction and dark emotional states he’d struggled with, but the overall feeling you’re left with is that he was overcoming his demons.

At the same time, he was truly exploring all of his musical talent. Surprisingly, John Mayer, who recorded guitar on “Small Worlds,” put it best, saying, “This was going to be Mac Miller’s year. He made a quantum leap in his music. That’s incredibly hard to do, to evolve and get better and more focused while your career is already underway.”

What’s strange is that I never really considered myself a fan of Mac Miller. Truthfully, when I was in high school, I was envious of his success. He was only a year older than me, but was becoming a nationally acclaimed artist and touring all over the country while I was just your average high school student trying to pass trigonometry. His meteoric rise came around the same time a bunch of kids in my high school were listening to a slew of young rappers who all sounded just like Mac, so I thought maybe this was just another kid making party music that high schoolers would love for a couple years before the hype faded out.

For Mac Miller, it didn’t fade.

I’ve always been a hip-hop fan, but it wasn’t until my junior year in college that any of Miller’s music made it into my rotation. Even then, it was only a couple of songs. “Gees” and “Red Dot Music” off of Watching Movies with the Sound Off came up as Spotify recommendations, and I listened to them a ton, but I never really took the time to listen to the rest of the album. The same could be said with The Divine Feminine. The first time I heard “Dang,” I was hooked just like so many other people.

Swimming was different. I first heard “Ladders” on a new music playlist the day the album came out, and my immediate response was to think, ‘whoa, who’s this?’ I pulled up Spotify, surprised to find it was Mac Miller. It was the perfect introduction to the album, with the soulful, melancholic intro, followed by a great dynamic shift to a bass groove and horns.

I listened to bits of the album here and there over the next month, telling myself I’d eventually give it its due and listen to the entire thing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until hearing about his passing that I finally got around to it, and I felt guilty. Why hadn’t I given this guy more credit? What took me so long to fall in love with his music? I was so moved by the album and his musical talent, let alone his ability to open up about his struggles and the emotions that accompanied them. I listened to the tracks over and over, particularly hung up on mellow, open feel of the production on “Dunno,” and the mixture of the slow, soulful chorus woven with the effortless rhythmic flow of the verses on “Wings.”

The barrage of memorials from my favorite rappers and industry icons were all over social media that day. It got to the point that I sought out specific individuals to see what they had to say about Mac Miller. They collectively described an incredibly thoughtful, ambitious, passionate, loving and selfless person. He seemed to have an infectious energy, and all the interactions people recounted having with him painted a picture of him being nothing but genuine and sincere. A clear love for his family and Pittsburgh roots shines through both the memorials and his work. He even went as far as featuring his grandmother telling the story of meeting his grandfather on the final track of The Divine Feminine.

Before long, I found myself down a rabbit hole, reading profiles, album reviews, and Genius annotations of his music, then watching videos of interviews, live performances, a cameo in Scary Movie 5, and even a bit of his Vine compilation. The energy, enthusiasm and depth of his character described by his contemporaries shined through. The more I learned about Mac, the more I began to realize why his passing so unexpectedly affected me.

Everything I learned about Mac Miller made me feel like I really knew him. Of course I didn’t, but I did have someone in my life who had seemingly every character trait in common with him.

My cousin Matt had a kind of energy that immediately filled the room. A former college basketball player, his physical stature certainly aided him, but even if he’d been a foot shorter there still would have been an unmistakable aura of excitement, enthusiasm and positivity that followed him everywhere he went. He had this way of making even the bleakest situations brighter by flashing a smile, warm-heartedly teasing you to lighten the mood, and diverting attention from the negative by clowning and making a fool of himself just to make everybody else feel better. Though sometimes coming off as obnoxious, he always found a way of winning over everyone. It was impossible not to love the guy.

Matt was hard working, fiercely passionate, and annoyingly gifted at everything he tried his hand at, from sports, to music, to art. He had immense pride for his city of Chicago and its teams. Greater than anything, though, was his love for his family. He always put family first, and would have gone to extraordinary lengths to help his loved ones however he was able.

What will be five years ago this October, we lost Matt to an overdose. A years-long struggle with addiction cut his life short. Much like Mac’s situation, Matt had so much more to give to the world. On the verge of finishing law school, there is no doubt in my mind that he was on his way to becoming an incredible attorney. I know Matt had more love, joy and passion to share with those around him. We miss him immensely, but carry his memory with love, and do our best to keep his spirit alive by trying to spread the same positivity, passion and love that he did.

My cousin Matt was so greatly loved, and it’s clear from everything I’ve read that Mac Miller was, too. The most difficult thing to digest in these situations is how addiction can cloud the mind and prevent the person struggling from seeing how much love they have surrounding them, and how many people they have ready and willing to support them through their toughest moments.

I think it’s important to touch on the idea of support. Addiction is a disease, and even if the addict realizes they’re struggling with it and they want to make a change, it’s not easy for them to do so alone. Having a support system is so incredibly important, just as it would be with any other rehabilitation process. The difficult thing with addiction, as is the case with many mental health issues, is that it doesn’t always show on the surface. While Mac Miller wasn’t coy about his addiction, I had no idea that my cousin was struggling.

Some may view it as a cliche, but with these situations when we’re reminded of the seriousness of our country’s addiction problem, and we have to keep in mind the fact that everybody has their own story. No matter what may shine through on the surface, we don’t know each person’s story, and what they may be struggling with. All we can do, and what we should do, is let our loved ones know how much we care, and that we are always there for them. And for the people we interact with in passing, treat them with kindness and respect.

I am here for all of my friends and family. If you’re reading this, and you’ve ever considered me a friend, I am here if you need help, or if you need someone to talk to. I may not have the solutions, but if you need someone to confide in, need help finding someone to confide in, or whatever it may be, I am here to help.

Losing a loved one, or even a public figure you connected with, can be devastating, and may leave you searching for meaning. I promise you, meaning is there. The grief may always be tough to shake, but we can always keep the memories of the people we lost alive by living our lives inspired by the qualities we loved in them.

I’ll leave you with these words from Craig Jenkins in his final interview with Mac Miller for Vulture.

“If you want to honor his memory, work on your dreams and listen to your feelings. Be a force that brings people together. Seek and encourage greatness. Take chances on people who deserve a break. Leave unfounded rumors alone. Malcolm was hilarious and just genuinely committed to shining love and light on anyone who needed it. I wish the universe gave more back.”

You are loved.

Rest in Peace, Mac Miller.

After 20

UPDATE March 14, 2023: The original K Sign design is now available to be purchased as a shirt!

Originally published May 20, 2018.

Last Thanksgiving, with my family seated around the dinner table, I waited. I had been contacted a week prior, and given information that needed just the right moment to be divulged. As a few of us began to push our plates of seconds toward the center of the table, signaling concession until next November, and a lull in conversation set in, I seized my opportunity.

"So... last week I got an email from the Cubs. They're filming a documentary for the 20th anniversary of Kerry Wood's 20 strikeout game."

At a lot of Thanksgiving dinner tables, this news would have been met with disinterested nods and hushed murmurs of, "who's Kerry Woods?" But at our table, those two sentences grabbed everybody's attention.

"They know about Dad's story, and they want it to be a part of the doc."

To my father, Tom Bujnowski, baseball was more than just a game. Though he loved playing, coaching and watching the game, it was more than just the competition and athleticism that appealed to him. He loved the numbers, and he loved the strategy. Both brilliantly creative and analytical, baseball allowed my dad to crunch the numbers and come up with solutions to make a player, and a team, better. If my dad were still around, he'd be a sabermetric genius.

When he entered a room, you were immediately aware of his presence. He was built like a linebacker because, well, he was a linebacker. Knee problems from one fateful play gone wrong in his college days forced him to lumber around with heavy footing. Caught in a face mask in high school, one of his pinkies angled outward ever so slightly. The lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes were both a reflection of his expressive nature and his lack of regard for sunscreen. When he spotted you, his eyes would widen, one eyebrow would arch ever so slightly, and an infectious grin would light up his face, only to be followed by his defining feature.

"ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BASEBALL?!"

I can still hear the echoes of my dad's booming voice out in the left field bleachers.

"MOISES! YOU'RE GOIN' YARD BAY-BAAAY!"

Though his larger than life persona got on the nerves of many upon first impression, his enthusiasm, passion and overwhelming optimism never failed to win over even the most reluctant people. With that ability, I'm not the least bit surprised he convinced 16 Cubs fans to hold up some laminated red and blue Ks, and four more to don red and blue body-painted Ks on a wet and crummy May day in Chicago, all the while cheering deliriously for a 20-year-old kid.

This is where 20 comes in. Cubs Productions, along with the wonderful recount of the fourth K holder, Matt Erickson, piece together my dad's day in the bleachers as well as anybody could. See, I had preschool the day of the 20 K game, and I wasn't allowed to skip to go to Wrigley, though it's unlikely I would remember much of it anyway. That, or it would have been my first, most vivid memory. My dad passed in August of 2007, and as far as I know, he didn't leave any written memoir of the game. The one bit of information I vividly remember him telling me about the day, which was not shared in 20, was where he got the number 34 jerseys. 

He was convinced Kerry was going to be the next great 34. So, planning ahead, he brought along jerseys of some of the other great 34s for fans to wear in the bleachers in support of Kerry. My dad was a coach and physical education teacher and worked at two different schools, one of which is still well known for having one of the largest student populations in the state of Illinois. You might guess said school would have quite an inventory in its lost and found. Apparently, my dad took that guess and hit the jackpot with a handful of 34 jerseys, and brought them to the bleachers on May 6th, 1998.

After 20

The Ks were were immediately tied to Kerry's gem. Broadcast on both the Cubs and Astros telecasts, the camera panning across a group of red and blue signs held by a bunch of bleacher bums in mismatching jerseys became a visual as recognizable as Kerry's fist pump at the end of the game. As a physical education teacher skipping school to go see a Cubs game, my dad claimed he tried to keep himself out of the spotlight. Turns out he did a pretty poor job, as he ended up in a Chicago Tribune column the day after the game. To his credit, he tried to make it about the kids. Going forward, he wanted to "invite 20 youngsters to attend the game[s] and hold up a special 'K' sign, one for each strikeout recorded by Wood," with the goal of helping kids find positive role models in sports. This idea would later be the foundation for our family’s charity, Ks For Kids.

Less than two weeks later, my dad reached the pinnacle of his 15 minutes of fame, getting name dropped in the hook of a Sports Illustrated feature article of Kerry Wood. The same article in print featured a two-page spread of the Ks out in the bleachers, effectively cementing the K signs, and their creator, in Cubs lore.

As he promised in the Tribune article, the signs continued to make their way out to Kerry's starts with my dad and groups of players from the freshman baseball team he coached. Needless to say, my dad was well-liked by the bleacher bums, whose faces I still remember vividly from my trips to left field. Like my dad bringing the Ks, they had their own rituals. My personal favorite was turning the old paper beer cups upside down and stomping on them to make them pop during the "bombs bursting in air" line of the national anthem. 

Plenty of Cubs fans over the years have heckled visiting teams' left fielders, going as far as doing research on personal details so they had premeditated material to get in the players' heads. My dad's methods were a little different. As loud as he was, it wasn't difficult for him to get the attention of the player manning left field, which, of course, led to us getting plenty of baseballs tossed our way between innings, and autographs during batting practice. Getting to Wrigley for batting practice was a key ritual. We used to get to the field as early as possible, hanging out first by the Cubs bullpen, and later, taking our seats in the bleachers while the opposing team took batting practice.

Always in favor of making things interesting, my dad came up with a game he liked to play. The K Challenge.

It was simple. My dad made a deal with the opposing left fielder. If they struck out against Kerry, they owed my dad an autographed hat. If they got a hit against Kerry, they got a K shirt from my dad. Fair trade, right? My dad got a number of players to agree to take the K Challenge, including Rockies Left Fielder, Dante Bichette. Bichette ended up both striking out and, I believe, getting a hit. I know I have an autographed Rockies hat with Bichette's signature on it, and I have a picture of Bichette penning his name on a K shirt for us as well. We also got three signed hats from Pat Burrell, a true hat trick, as well as hats from players on the Brewers and Tigers.

I remember my dad asking Dante Bichette to take the K Challenge very vividly. My dad later explained that he thought Dante was great, and probably agreed to taking the challenge because I was there, and am the same age as his son, Dante, Jr.

Dante Bichette signs a K shirt.

Dante Bichette with the autographed hat for my dad.

My dad took my cousin, Matt, and me with our friends to countless games to hold the Ks.

This routine went on for a few more years. As I grew up and my dad started coaching my baseball teams, he ended up treating plenty of my friends and their families to trips out to the Friendly Confines. My dad had gotten to know the ushers so well that he'd buy some nosebleed tickets for majority of the group, hide them amongst a few bleacher tickets, give our favorite usher a meatball sub, and she'd look the other way as our large group filed up into the bleachers. If by chance anybody from the Cubs organization happens to read this, I do not condone that trickery, nor does the usher still work at Wrigley to reprimand.

The important point is that my dad instilled a love for baseball, and the Cubs, in countless people. His dream of helping kids find positive role models in sports worked, but likely a little bit differently than he'd originally planned. We all looked up to my dad as our role model. We saw the way he loved the game, the way he shared his knowledge and passion for the sport with the people around him and the way he interacted so positively with everybody he came into contact with. I can say with certainty that I, and plenty of my friends and kids my dad coached, took those values and lessons to heart, and they still drive our love for the game of baseball.

The Ks weren't only reserved for the Cubs. When Randy Johnson struck out 20 Reds in 2001, my dad had K shirts printed in Diamondback Green and Purple, and sent to The Big Unit as a congratulations. I remember my dad telling me once that he thought Johnson wore the shirt under his jersey when he pitched, though there's no way to confirm it without hearing from Randy himself. It was around the same time that my dad was in talks with Majestic, which, at the time, was the official outfitter of Major League Baseball. My dad's dream was for the K to become the official K of MLB, and a potential agreement with Majestic to mass produce K shirts on each team's primary color would have been a huge step toward that. While a deal never came to fruition, it is still an opportunity I plan to someday pursue.

Stevenson High School's freshman baseball team, coached by my dad, holding the K signs.

In 2002, my dad relived the excitement of Kerry Wood with the debut of Mark Prior. Now with two young studs in the starting rotation, my dad had twice as many games to bring the signs out. Ever the creative thinker, my dad created "M," "A," and "R" signs, which would be followed by all of the Ks Prior racked up in each of his starts. The Cubs were reaching the peak of their 2000s dominance, and the Ks followed each step.

Going into the 2003 season, my dad knew that the team had only gotten better, and predicted they were going to make a big run. The year before, he had begun printing mini Ks to hand out to people in the bleachers so everyone could get in on the fun. In 2003, they got an update. A baseball purist, my dad had scorecards printed on the back of the miniature Ks, and he would use them to teach people how to score a game. The Cubs had also made some offseason pitching additions, and he added a little writeup on the side of the scorecard breaking down the acquisitions and what they meant for the team. While hopes were high, we all know how the season wrapped up.

Despite the NCLS defeat, we continued to take the Ks out to Wrigley multiple times each summer, hoping to catch lighting in a bottle one more time. Slowly, as my own summer baseball schedule became busier, the number of games we made our way to slowly began to taper off until, in 2007, we lost my dad.

From May 6, 1998, through the summer of 2007, my dad's goal was to introduce as many kids as possible to the magic of Wrigley Field and the game of baseball. Shortly after the 20 K game, he created the framework for Ks For Kids. He worked for the next nine years, trying to get the idea of his foundation off the ground. He thought it important that everybody had the opportunity to experience the Friendly Confines and the excitement that baseball has to offer. Through Ks For Kids, he hoped to raise money and bring groups of children, who otherwise wouldn't have the means, to Cubs games and teach them about baseball. He communicated with the Cubs, with Cubs players and others to try to bring the idea to life, but unfortunately the idea was never fully realized before his passing.

Ryan Dempster with Ks For Kids in 2012.

After lots of hard work and determination from both friends and family, Ks For Kids held its first outing in 2008. Each year, for the following five years, Ks For Kids worked with Chicago youth organizations to find groups of 50 children to bring out to one Cubs game per summer. In 2012, we were lucky enough to have an extra outing, hosted by one of my favorite Cubs, Ryan Dempster. When the game was finished, Dempster took the time to come chat with the kids, and take pictures with our group. We were lucky to have five great summers of Ks For Kids before the passing of our Vice President, and my cousin, Matt Corning, in the fall of 2013 led to us putting operations on hold.

Nowadays the Ks don't see the bleachers nearly as often as they did in their heyday. Much like my dad had a dream for what the Ks could be, I have my own. I want as many people as possible to have the thrill of holding up a K sign when a Cubs pitcher strikes out a batter. I would love nothing more than to bring the Ks out to each Cubs home game and have them act as the Cubs unofficial K count. Unfortunately, I can't go to every game to coordinate that. However, each section at Wrigley Field has its own usher, and there aren't many people I would trust more than the Cubs and their world class staff to run the operation of handing out the Ks each game. Nothing would make me happier than knowing they're out there every game, and people get to enjoy them the way my dad intended.

No matter how often, or how little, you see the K signs out in the left field bleachers, I can promise you they aren't going anywhere. Thanks to the Chicago Cubs phenomenal retelling of May 6, 1998, my dad and his passion will forever be cemented in baseball history.