I didn’t expect to cry over a fictional baseball player.

Yet there I was, sitting at my computer with tears running down my face after typing the last sentence of his retirement ceremony.

When I first started planning Pitches & Pints, I knew I wanted the Waypoint Lagerheads to play the Carolina Waves. How fun would it be to have both of my fictional baseball teams on the same field?

Originally, I pictured writing one of the games. But somewhere along the way, that idea changed.

Instead of focusing on nine innings, I found myself wondering…what if one of the Carolina Waves players was on his retirement tour? And if I was going to retire someone, there was never really another choice. It had to be Jack.

I knew that was where his story was headed. Every scene I wrote brought him one step closer to hanging up his cleats. I thought I was prepared for it. I wasn’t.

It wasn’t that Jack was gone. He isn’t. He still lives on the pages of my books, ready for readers to meet him for the first time or visit him all over again.

But something had changed. The chapter of Jack’s life I’d been writing for years was over. And somehow, that made saying goodbye feel real.

People often ask if writers get attached to their characters. For me, the answer is yes.

After spending years with them, they stop feeling like names on a page. You know how they’d answer a question before you’ve written the dialogue. You know what makes them laugh, what keeps them up at night, and what they’d do when life throws them a curveball.

They’re fictional. But the emotions they evoke aren’t.

Maybe that’s why we cry over books and movies. Our hearts don’t stop to ask whether someone is real before deciding they’re important.

Writing Jack’s retirement reminded me that endings aren’t always endings. Sometimes they’re simply the beginning of a new season.

I’ll miss writing him running onto the field, but I’m grateful I’ll never really have to say goodbye. Every time someone opens one of my books, he’ll still be there.