toward the bigs, he noticed that the
game was controlling his moods. To
pitch well was to enjoy a night think-
ing about nothing else; to pitch poorly
was to be condemned to the same. “My
whole life, my everything—I was con-
sumed by baseball,” he says. “How that
was going determined how I was feel-
ing about literally anything.”
So he looked for an answer, a way
to get out of his head after he left
the ballpark. He tried video games,
tried streaming TV shows until he fell
asleep. And, finally, he found it: He
read science-fiction books.
“Reading is just a way for my brain
to focus on something else,” he says.
“That’s why I like sci-fi. It’s very much
an escape, an alternate reality that has
nothing to do with baseball or sports
or anything going on.”
His favorite book is one of the first
that he read in his foray into sci-fi,SEAN DOOLITTLE’S decision to
visit an independent bookstore on
every road trip last season did not start
as any grand plan—he simply needed
some books. The lefthanded closer for
the World Series champion Nationals
with the bushy red beard and glasses
reads voraciously, because he has to.
It’s become crucial to his relationship
with baseball and with himself.
For a few years, Doolittle, 33, has
had the same routine: After a game,
whether at home or in his hotel room,
he reads for an hour or two before bed.
(If he’s at a particularly good point in a
book, he’ll carve out more time the next
morning before he heads to the park.)
Drafted out of the University of
Virginia with the 41st pick in 2007,
Doolittle moved from first base to the
mound in ’11 after injuries caused him
to miss the better part of three seasons,
and as he followed his winding roadOctavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower,
which follows a girl with the gift of
“hyper-empathy” through a dystopian
society wrecked by climate change.
He takes recommendations outside
the genre from his wife, Eireann Dolan,
a former CSN Bay Area broadcaster
who spent most of the last two years
getting a master’s degree in pastoral
studies from Fordham and frequently
accompanies him to bookstores. “She’s
way smarter than me,” Doolittle says.
Reading has helped Doolittle put
his pitching in context. (The results
also have been easier to process: He
made his second All-Star appearance in
’18 and allowed just two runs in 10^1 / 3
innings during Washington’s playoff
run.) That—along with his relation-
ship with Dolan, whom he asked out
over Twitter in ’12 and married in ’17,
and daily sessions with Nats mental
skills coordinator Mark Campbell—has
helped him feel more secure about his
career and more comfortable speaking
publicly on issues he cares about.
His concerns about the world outside
baseball caught wider notice when he
declined to visit the White House in
November after the Series. (“My wife
and I stand for inclusion and accep-
tance,” he told The Washington Post.)
But that was hardly the first time
that he had voiced a political opinion.
Doolittle and Dolan have been vocal
for years about their work with Syrian
refugees, LGBTQ youth and wounded
veterans, among other groups. His
Twitter feed offers steady commen-
tary on causes dear to him: “I don’t
want to be mad online; I want it to be
constructive,” he says.
Before speaking out, he does his
homework. In preparing to write an
article about mental health care for vet-
erans for SI.com in ’17, he and Dolan
scheduled briefings to learn as much
as possible about the subject. Before
announcing that he would skip the
White House visit, Doolittle researched
how other athletes had shared similar
choices. As he got more involved in
spotlighting bookstores, he studied sta-
tistics on childhood literacy and beganBECAUSE...
THE CHAMPS’
CLOSER LOVES
INDEPENDENT
BOOKSTORES
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED26
ROB (^) G
REG
OR
Y
BY EMMA BACCELLIERI