Your Pal
Dud Lawson

was photographed by Clayton Hauck at See You Soon during a Keep it 100 session on February 6, 2025

**“You gotta create the opportunities that don't exist, and I am stupidly looking forward to that.”**

Dud’s Playlist:

“Sounds of South America”

I could’ve talked to Dud all day. Alas, we had to cut it off when we got into the weeds on elaborate niche fantasy baseball leagues.

How are you doing today?

Not great, Clayton!

Elaborate!

Uh, well, just the general state of the world isn't that great, so all you can really do is find stuff that you enjoy doing. That's kind of why I'm here.

Reminds me of that Rushmore quote: “Find something you love to do and do it for the rest of your life.”

“Take dead aim on the rich kids and take them down.” That's the one that resonates with me.

But yeah… I could really go for some precedented times right about now. All we can really do is figure out what we can do and how we can do it.

Not to dwell in the darkness too much, but let's live in it for a moment. What's something that really worries you about our times right now?

I have never really worried about the future until now. I've always had kind of a baseline of like everything will level out, and it seems like that level is a little bit lower than I have ever looked at it before. So that's not great, but all you can do is adapt. It's way easier to adapt when you're open to stuff than when you're rejecting stuff.

What is it that's worrying you broadly speaking? Is it the US craziness? Is it Ai? Is it at all of the above — “gestures broadly,” as they say?

Well, I've spent a long time getting really good at what I do, but now I'm having to figure out what I do. And it's to the point where I do a lot of stuff, and I'm good at a lot of stuff, but I'm not the best at any of it, and so it's trying to balance between, hey, here's somebody that can do everything pretty good, but not: that man is a master of that one thing.

Is there a favorite place you've been and/or a dream destination you haven't been?

I'd say that Buenos Aires is the coolest place that I've been and I mean and I'm just itching for an excuse to go there again.

What did you love about it? What was the thing that grabbed you?

It was familiar but different; and when I was taking Spanish in school, I learned textbook Spanish that was from Spain, Spanish. So living in the United States, everyone speaks like Mexican Spanish or Puerto Rican Spanish and so it never quite clicked, but getting down there, it's like, oh, no, this is the exact Spanish that I learned, so I actually was a little bit better Spanish there.

It just seemed like a like a nice place. If I could do anything right now, I would just be importing Argentine prog rock records — exclusively doing that. Last last year I got way deep in that one.

But where I haven't been, we were also talking about Japan. I'd love to go to Osaka and small towns to Japan and just see what normal life is like in other places.

What that's something you're excited about, looking forward to, something that excites you?

I’m really looking forward to baseball season this year, because I have a — in 2015, I started a defense-oriented fantasy baseball league, and I have been trying to perfect it, and last year, finally nailed it. It's called the Mendoza League. There's no more horse racing in town anymore, so I made my own horse race. So there's a field of batters and you try and pick who will finish closest to the Mendoza line. MendozaLeague.com — It's a blast! It is my favorite thing to write about, and, uh, you gotta create the opportunities that don't exist, and I am stupidly looking forward to that.

The lineup gets released on Valentine’s Day and I’m very, very excited about that.

favorite emoji? 🫡

I don't fully understand it, but I'm gonna check it out.

It is fantasy baseball for people who don't like fantasy baseball and maybe don't like baseball at all.

Are you familiar with Foolish Baseball on YouTube?

Yeah.

He did a big video about Adam Dunn and defense, and was he really as bad as we remember, and he basically made up a stat.

He did one that was: Let's Watch Ricky Henderson Play Baseball and he just found as many clips as he could’ve, because they only had clips from playing in the playoffs, but they wanted to a regular game.

Who's gonna win the World Series this year? and why is it the Dodgers?

The Dodgers. It sucks.

Does the situation annoy you as much as it does me? Or is it just business?

I think that it is just business, but why wouldn't you take less money to win a World Series? Like there's gonna be some huge changes. Shohei Ohtani doesn't make any money until like 40 years from now, because he's getting New Balance money and it doesn't matter. But what I think is gonna change everything is there's gonna be a a salary floor, like everybody talks about a salary cap, a salary floor is kind of where, I think everything is gonna go, and that is just gonna cause a lot of people to sell their baseball teams. Right now you can make more — it's The Producers — you can make more money with a losing baseball team than a winning one.

I just want to be clear that I'm glad the players are getting paid. I watched Ken Burns Baseball. They did the 10th inning, and they did one where they was about the the strike in 94, and it was just disgusting how everybody was against the players, and I'm like, oh, you bootlickin’ motherfuckers. What are we even doing here?

Yeah.

I think that's a good way to end it. (Laughs)

Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.