Throwing it back to the original Jack Talk piece in The Long Times issue #2 (between Warstic Woodman Jack White and Editor-in-Chief Jack Sanders), this is a conversation featuring Hollywood heartthrob and Sandlot newbie, Los Angeles Traffic utility player Jack Quaid. He’s starred in two films this year alone, Companion and Novacaine, as well as an ongoing TV series, The Boys, and had memorable roles in blockbusters like The Hunger Games and Oppenheimer. In his limited spare time he’s been known to visit The Long Time, like last season when the Traffic made their debut and earlier this month to repeat the glory. Read the full conversation between Jack and Jack where they discuss a Field of Dreams remake and embracing a Sandlot-inspired imperfection, among many other important topics.
Jack Quaid (JackQ): I love that I’m in this second iteration of Jack Talk.
Jack Sanders (JackS): Yes, and if you have some ideas about who I can follow up with for the third iteration?
JackQ: There's a couple Jacks out there. I still find it insane that there is a Jack White and a Jack Black and they are both famous rock ‘n’ roll people and they're both awesome.
JackS: During my extensive research for this interview I did watch Novocaine on a plane and really enjoyed it. I thought you did an awesome job, and it makes me excited for what you've got coming up. I imagine you're real busy.
JackQ: Yeah, I just wrapped up the final season of The Boys, which is really bittersweet. I got a few things coming up that I can't talk about too.
JackS: Well we're sticking to mostly baseball anyway.
JackQ: I got into baseball really because of our mutual friend, Nick Williams, who is the leader of the LA Traffic Sandlot baseball team. He's been my best friend for years. He's one of these guys that, once he has an idea, can't get it out of his head and will stop at nothing to make it a reality. Nick took a page out of the Texas Playboys because playing you last year was amazing and so fun.
JackS: Do you remember how Nick brought the idea for the team to you?
JackQ: The origin of our team is kind of a pandemic thing. Coming out of that and Nick wanting to get people together. We have this group of friends we’ve known since high school and we’re always trying to find ways to hang out with each other. For a while it was Dungeons & Dragons and it still is for a lot of those guys. I do it sometimes too, but baseball was a thing that he was inspired by you guys and other teams he was seeing. You're outside, you don't have to be good at it, and it's a great way to socialize.
JackS: I'm curious about your relationship with baseball prior to the Traffic. Did you play little league?
JackQ: I did, actually. I played tee-ball and was big into it. And then I remember when they started throwing the ball towards me I freaked out. I think I might have played a season of actual baseball, pitching the ball, and then I stopped. I was not the most athletic kid. And sports was quickly supplanted by the school play. So that became my thing. And now it’s so funny that me and all of these guys who also were the awkward, lanky, unathletic kids started a Sandlot baseball team.
JackS: I see that in Sandlot a lot. I like to ask people, ‘Could you've ever imagined that you'd be playing this much baseball?’ And they’re like, ‘Hell no.’
JackQ: Same, but it's so fun. It’s America's pastime, and once you're there, you're like, ‘Oh, I get it.’ The fact that you guys had not only the baseball game, but you had all these food stands, and merch shops, and you created this community. That’s a big thing I’m trying to cultivate in my own life. You guys nailed that, you have a place you get to meet.
JackS: I love it when the music's playing and the game is going, and I look out and nobody's watching the game, and you're just like, ‘What is this?’ That's the best. I think it's a church-like thing too, or at least the way people used church at one point when I was growing up in a small town in Texas, the pancake supper.
JackQ: I have a lot of history in Texas. I'm not from there, but half my family is and I would go to Austin a ton and still do. I love it there. I brought my uncle Buddy and aunt Marielle to the game and they loved it. Anytime I'm in Austin I would love to come back. I was there not too long ago. I was doing an audition and I was very nervous. And I remember I was in this cafe, and I'm kind of running my lines to myself, being quiet. Then I see this guy and I don't know who it was, but he was wearing a Texas Playboys shirt. I was like, I'm so in the zone right now but I wish I could talk to this dude. It feels like it's really permeating Austin, which is so fun.
JackS: I know you don't get to play much, you're so busy, but do you daydream about baseball a little bit now?
JackQ: I do find myself wanting to go to more Dodgers games. Recently when I was back in L.A. a friend of mine had an extra ticket and we were way up, not in good seats at all, but it was so much fun. I appreciate it as a good hang. It was really fun to just have a hot dog and a beer and catch up with a friend.
JackS: I'm wondering, have you had an opportunity to be part of a baseball movie yet?
JackQ: No, but I would love that. I would actually love to do a sports movie. Look, I don't necessarily follow sports, but I am obsessed with sports documentaries. I love the stories around sports. There are such interesting people and characters and situations. I got really into 30 for 30s. I love The Last Dance, the one about the Chicago Bulls, incredible. And then on Netflix, there's this series called Untold, which is unbelievable.
JackS: What about a baseball movie that you enjoy?
JackQ: When we were in Austin, and I had never seen it before, for some reason, but we were all staying together in a house and were prepping to play you guys and we all watched The Sandlot and it was the first time I'd ever seen it. Maybe I glimpsed it as a kid, but I don't remember it at all.
JackS: It's from ‘93 and I noticed you were born in ‘92…
JackQ: Yeah, just missed me. That's the kind of movie that was on VHS in every home and I can't believe I missed it. Honestly, I'd love to do a movie about Sandlot. It was cool to see when I came to your field that it wasn’t just the Playboys and Traffic but you had a few teams from different places that were all there that day. It's just unbelievable.
JackS: You're definitely gonna be the person we reach out to when we make the movie.
JackQ: Please! Please make the Playboys movie. I'll be in it. I'll be you. Or if you want to be you, that's fine.
JackS: No, I can't do me. I have a feeling somebody in casting is going to prefer you. But yeah, that's definitely something we're gonna come back to someday.
JackQ: Oh, hell yeah. I just love that whole community.
JackS: Yeah I think a better name for it might be “community baseball.” Which is more aligned with what The Long Time is modeled after, a baseball club in Newbern, Alabama called the Newbern Tigers I found as an architecture student at Auburn University. The African American community in that part of west Alabama has created all sorts of what they call benevolent societies or social and pleasure clubs. And the Newbern Baseball Club would raise money for the community at their games so it really was for the community, not about playing baseball so much. There’s a service element to what we do with the Playboys at The Long Time because we wanted to emulate what they were doing. That’s what we’re rooted in.
JackQ: I love that. It's so much deeper than baseball and you can really feel that when you're at The Long Time. It's cool to see people bringing their kids and some people who are watching have no real affiliation with the teams playing, they're just there to hang out.
JackS: I’m partially thinking about the roots of all of this because I'm making a documentary right now about this type of baseball. We’re going back to Newbern. I was 25 when I played for the Newbern Tigers and my heroes on that team were 50 years old. Now they're 75 and I'm 50. I talked to one of those players the other day. His name's Boochie Smith, and he said, ‘We just can't throw it as hard as we used to, you know.’ And I said, ‘Well, Boochie, I'm 49 and I'm in my prime.’ So we’re going to interview some of these guys who are still with us.
JackQ: I can’t wait to see that. That's gonna be amazing.
JackS: Enough about me, let’s switch gears. Is there a role that would be your dream role? Something you’ve always wanted to play?
JackQ: I love a good western. I haven’t gotten to be in one yet. I think they're amazing and they're not made as much anymore. But occasionally a western creeps up here or there that's amazing and modern, and I would love to be in something like that. I grew up watching a lot of Sergio Leone and spaghetti westerns and even Sam Peckinpah and stuff like that. I think they're so good and I would love to be part of something like that. That's kind of the dream for me. I think you can say a lot with a western. I just rewatched Unforgiven the other day, that's just such an incredible movie that says so much, it's such a rich movie.
JackS: Who are your heroes as actors?
JackQ: Jim Carrey is big, his physicality. You just saw Novocaine. He’s also this lengthy guy flopping around. In that same vein, Keanu Reeves, the way he uses his body for John Wick. I think you should give him an Oscar for those movies alone. Tom Hanks is a perfect every man. If there's one person I'd love to model a career after, I think it'd be him. Now I’m thinking about that baseball movie, and I got to thank Nick Williams for that, for bringing baseball back into my life. And you also had a break from baseball and then found it again?
JackS: Yeah, it’s a longer story, but I met a man out front of a Piggly Wiggly named Tiny who asked me for a ride to the baseball game. I said, ‘Of course.’ And I drove 11 miles to this place called The Newbern Baseball Club. And it's literally been the focus of my life and work since then.
JackQ: Was it really like that? A guy sees you at Piggly Wiggly, that's…wow.
JackS: Again, a long story, but I proposed (as a student) to do my architectural thesis project with them. Which I did a couple years later when I built a backstop for their field. I did that project and I kept showing up to watch the games, probably over the course of a year or so, and I used to bring my glove with me but never played. Finally there was a day when I was there and the other team was short a player and they asked me to play.
JackQ: That’s a classic baseball movie right there.
JackS: (laughs) Yes, they were missing a young white guy so yeah, I fit in. So I played in my jeans straight from the bleachers. Then at the end of the game the Newbern Tigers, who I'd been trying to get to know over the course of years, invited me to play with them. And I was like, ‘It would be my dream.’ So for the next three years I got to stick around and teach in the architecture school there.
JackQ: Oh my god. You had the best life there. You were teaching and you were playing baseball.
JackS: It was.
JackQ: Did you design The Long Time? What was that before you guys came to it?
JackS: There was just a house there. I had started thinking about building a baseball field and I began a search for a piece of property, and wanted to build it with recycled, donated, or found materials. But I really never thought that property was big enough. Excuse me, my dog is on the table. Get down. (laughs) And then eventually it was clear that being a small field would actually be the draw. It's what's really special about it, people that have never hit a home run in their lives get to at The Long Time and they run the bases the same way.
Jack Quaid: The Long Time was the biggest field we had ever played on. It was perfect for us. It was unbelievable. That's so cool that you built it with recycled material no less. That's unbelievable.
Jack Sanders: That's always been a focus of my work. And it ties well into Sandlot baseball, you can't get it wrong, you know, there's no wrong answers because it doesn't have to last forever. Now the rule is no tape measures. I can build this no different than the way I would have done it in an empty lot as an eight year old. It becomes your Dodger Stadium.
JackQ: That's so cool. Yeah, you don't have to worry about regulation size or any of that stuff. I love that. I think sometimes, as an actor, as a writer, there are times where I strive for perfect, and that comes at the sacrifice of potentially great. There's something really inspiring about that. I remember early in my career, trying to do things in a perfect way, but I couldn't just let things go and be what they were. I think I've become a lot better at that. Sometimes people don't like to release anything unless it's the absolute best it can be, and you should strive for the best you can do. But if you were so wrapped up in, ‘It's gotta be the perfect baseball field,’ The Long Time would have never happened and that would have been a shame.
JackS: I think we're playing the best baseball of our lives now too, because we've freed ourselves of that idea of any sort of perfection. Most 18 or 25 year old baseball players are complete disasters mentally, and I imagine actors are at the same point I was. You’re hard on yourself, and you're so aware of the perceived consequences of your mistake or failure that it paralyzes you.
JackQ: One thousand percent. You realize, ‘What if I mess up? Who cares?’ You get another take.
JackS: You get another swing.
JackQ: I still forget that sometimes. I'm on set, and I'm like, ‘Oh, it's not a play. I do get another take.’ A really good thing about community baseball, what I love is that it gives you an opportunity to fail. It is really amazing in that way. It helps you not take things as seriously, and then when you start taking things less seriously, you wind up doing better anyway.
JackS: The other thing that makes me think about this perfection thing is, I think Field of Dreams is a beautiful movie. But I was bothered by it as a younger person, that the field was too perfect. My favorite fields in MLB are the ones that are shaped by their surroundings, like Fenway Park that has the green monster in left because it's shaped by the neighborhood that surrounds it.
JackQ: Yeah, I never thought about it that way, because when you think about golf, it depends on the course, and so much of what makes the game interesting is playing on a different course each time and you have to get used to the course. I kind of love that, if more baseball fields were more askew.
JackS: I guess my point here is that it could be the Field of Dreams remake that we should talk about.
JackQ: Yeah, and it should be, ‘If you build it imperfectly, they will come.’ I don't know, something better than that. But let's embrace the quirks. I love that.
JackS: One last thing I'll ask you, can you tell us about something coming up you’re excited about (and allowed to talk about)?
JackQ: Currently, there's a movie that came out a couple months back called Heads of State, it’s an action comedy. I'm in it for a sequence, but it's very fun. It’s got John Cena as the President of the United States and Idris Elba is the Prime Minister of the U.K. It's basically Lethal Weapon with two heads of state. It's very fun. I’m also producing Nick’s (Williams) venture, a podcast called Hero Club, based on Dungeons & Dragons. Nick and George Primavera, who's also on the LA Traffic, co-created that together, and it's so wonderful, if you're at all into that, and even if you're not we basically make it so it's a radio play and we tell our own original stories within the world of D&D. I'm at a juncture in my life where I just want to work with my friends until I'm dead. Whatever we can do to get their stuff out there and they're so good at what they do.
JackS: I do hope to see you back at The Long Time soon.
JackQ: I would love to be back. Thank you so much for having me. This is totally so fun.
Happy to be here,
Traffic #24 Jack “Hollywood” Quaid and Playboys #42 Jack Sanders
