On July 8th - six days ago - I again stepped into the batter’s box here on the Substack diamond to take my swings.
The situation was dire for my team. It was the bottom of the 9th and Team Rice was down by three runs with two outs in the last inning. The good news is that America’s Team had three runners on base. However, adding stress, the pitcher quickly got two strikes on me.
The pitcher rocks, fires … Bill focusses as hard as he can, swings, ball hits bat on sweet spot and - I can’t believe it - that ball is out of here!
Walk-off, grand slam!
Play-by—play Announcer: “What a great column Bill posted today!”
Color commentator: “Wow! The crowd is going wild.”
Yes, indeedy - Holllyyy Cow! - Breaking a season-long slump, a Substack author who was hitting just .100 for the season and hadn’t hit a home run all season, stroked one that was still rising when it sailed over the left field fence.
In fact, that one Substack swing netted me 116 new free subscribers when I had been losing, on average, five to 10 subscribers every time I stepped into the batter’s box and hit “send” on a story.
In today’s follow-up plate appearance, I would like to provide the back story of a column that was the lead highlight on “Sports Center” and caused my wife to give me a big, wet kiss on the lips.
It turns out that Bill wasn’t the real hero of this game. The real hero was one of his loyal fans, Dr. Meryl Nass, a beloved (or reviled) contrarian physician who, after having her license to practice medicine revoked by the Commissioner (for allegedly posting dangerous disinformation), continued to publish a Substack newsletter.
Before I stepped into the batter’s box in the bottom of the 9th, my column (“Here’s what I think really happened with Covid”) had been read by approximately 3,500 people, but had produced only a handful of new subscribers, which was still three more than most of my articles had produced in the last 18 months.
While I was in the dugout, thinking about switching bats, Dr. Nass sent a message down to the dugout.
In a note (actually an email), she told me that she wanted to cross-post my column, but, for some reason, was having difficulty performing this routine Substack activity.
“I was not able to cross post your July 8 article with pic of Mad Men,” Dr. Nass said, adding, “The reason is there are no 3 dots in the upper right corner of the piece. Wanted to let you know.”
The note caught my attention because, on occasion, I too had wanted to cross-post an article I liked or thought was important and couldn’t do it for the same reason (no three dots) next to the story header.
Dr. Nass added in her note:
“Also, I don’t think I am getting your posts most of the time.”
This note actually angered me, although it also confirmed or reinforced a long-held hypothesis of mine:
“Somebody doesn’t want my Substack articles to reach hardly any people; someone is messing with my Substack.”
I scribbled a note in response, handed it to the bat boy who delivered it up into the bleachers to Dr. Nass.
My note (email) thanked Dr. Nass for taking an interest in this particular column and I added that if she could figure out a way to cross-post my piece ..
“I will also be able to tell how many more readers and subscribers I get when a colleague with a much-larger subscription base shares my story.”
(Note: Dr. Nass now, supposedly or reportedly, has 48K subscribers, which she told me is 5,000 fewer than she had a year ago.)
Two innings later I got another note (email) from Dr. Nass, delivering fantastic news:
“I had so much trouble finding your newsletter through Google, then trying to get to the archive page. Anyway, after several more clicks and false starts, I actually reached a page that allowed me to cross post it. Go figure.”
Dr. Nass added: “It is very hard to find Substacks (or maybe our kind of Substack) using search engines.”
In a nutshell, my column was now going to reach a lot more readers and prospective subscribers.
***
Sure enough (I had my device with me in the dugout), my story metrics immediately started to explode.
Without Dr. Nass’s assist, the story had produced 80 likes, which was very good compared to my previous plate appearances (which had been averaging about 40 to 50 “likes.”)
My teammates must have wondered what I was doing as a smile spread across my face while I spit out a few more sunflower seeds.
… 85 likes, 90 … 100! 120! … (Update: Last I checked, my story had generated 240 “likes.”)
And the emails started coming in from Substack: new subscriber, new subscriber, new subscriber …
“Boys,” I said, “I’m back in business. We ain’t dead yet.”
(Troy University has a baseball player named Jabe Boroff. For most of the season, this player was hitting under .125 and had only one home run. In one month, he blasted 10 home runs and is now known as “Jabe Ruth.” Jabe is my role model.)
As fans of my newsletter must know, for almost two years, I had been struggling with the dreaded loss of confidence.
“Casey (Bill) has lost his Mojo,” all the headlines read.
A former top prospect and candidate for Substack Rookie of the Year back in 2022, Rice, poor fellow, could no longer buy a hit, much less a home run.
I, of course, could read the writing on the wall - the analytics (metrics), don’t lie … or (keep reading, do they?)
A couple of games before this big game I even wrote a story saying my Substack ship, like the Titanic, was sinking. There was probably nothing I could do to stop this.
In a week, I’d be sent down to AAA in Nashville and next season I’d no doubt be in A ball in Beloit, Wisconsin.
Pundits had a field day speculating on what had happened to me.
Conventional wisdom seems to have agreed that I was a victim of “Covid fatigue” or “newsletter over-saturation” which was causing millions of Substack readers to cull subscriptions as fast as they received a new article in their in-box.
I meekly replied, “Well, I write about plenty of subjects that aren’t Covid” and couldn’t help but ask, “Why are only ‘Covid contrarian’ readers culling subscriptions at a furious clip? This isn’t happening to Kait Justice or Robert Reich …”
Others said I must have changed my swing, which accounted for all my strikeouts.
“No, I haven’t changed my swing,” I said. “My writing is the same as it was three years ago.” I even added: “I think it’s better.”
While I never said this publicly to the sports scribes who gathered around my locker after every game, privately, I thought my game experience had allowed me to polish my writing and that my brain synopses were firing at a higher clip, allowing me to connect dots I hadn’t been able to connect when I made my Major League debut on Substack.
For their part, the tabloids said I was clearly paranoid, just another wacko conspiracy theorist prone to whining.
Or, people said, “he’s getting what he deserves. He keeps posting dangerous and extremist articles that are going to jeopardize the public’s safety if people are allowed to read his content.”
All of this is back-story material that will come out in a “30-for-30” documentary one day, but these anecdotes show that I was feeling some pressure and was not working from an optimal mental state when I stepped into the batter’s box and wrote my first sentence of “This is what I think really happened with Covid.”
And then Dr. Nass cross-posted my article and I was able to tell my naysayers, “Take that,” except a classy, old-school ball player, I kept my mouth shut.
I will add that the metrics that story produced still strike me as off, dubious or “curious.”
For example, Substack tells me that my play-of-the-day story ended up generating 6,400 “Page views.”
However, I just sent a follow-up email to Dr. Nass, who told me - per her metrics - 19,066 of her readers actually read the Bill Rice, Jr. story she cross-posted. (If one adds 3,000 of my readers that had already read this article, that story reached at least 22,000 readers).
Also, Substack tells me - with one metric - that this story produced 47 new subscribers (three paid and 44 free).
However, when I posted that story I had 7,509 total subscribers and I now (supposedly) have 7,625 subscribers. Per simple subtraction, I added 116 new subscribers.
Since I’ve only posted one original story since then (“Logic, Jim”) and that story “reverted to the norm,” and produced only one new subscriber, by deductive reasoning (“Logic, Jim”) I concluded that my prior story (my grand slam story) actually generated 115 new subscribers.
Per my logic or belief, one story produced 115 new subscribers when I’d been averaging losing five net subscribers every time I stepped into the batter’s box.
(When I was called up to the Big Leagues, the scouting report on me said, “Rice has a unique talent for detecting odd trend changes.”)
My answer is only one thing changed: Dr. Nass cross-posted this article.
That article actually reached far more people than all my other 2025-2026 articles had been reaching. (Back when I was a Rookie of the Year candidate, and metrics might have been more credible, I once wrote a story that got 74,000 Page Views).
And - at least to me, here’s the headline - when new readers are exposed to my writing - 115 of them decided they liked my writing style and decided they would become either a paid subscriber or a free subscriber.
For some reason, the phenomena of “Covid fatigue” or “subscription over-saturation” didn’t apply to this story or to this new pool of readers.
In effect, what happened (IMO) is that through a clever work-around, Dr. Nass figured out a way to get one of my articles around “the gatekeepers of the news.”
And, just like was the case for the first two years of my Substack, when new readers read my stuff, an impressive ratio of them decided to give this kid a chance and become free subscribers.
As “proof of readership,” - these readers also hit the “like” button at a rate that was four to six-fold more than my previous corpus of articles. The number of Reader Comments, which I value greatly, also exploded.
The flood of new free subscribers fed my ego and the $192 boost in “annualized revenue” brought my checking account back into the black.
However, what really made me feel like Alabama’s Tua Tongolovia had just completed a 40-yard TD pass to Devonta Smith (on 3rd-and-26) in overtime of the national championship game against Georgia in 2017 … is that this column seems to support my hypothesis that someone really has been messing with my Substack metrics to suppress my reach and take money out of my pocket.
It seems to me I was right all the time.
If people, or the algorithms, would just leave me alone and go back to the 2023 Status Quo, my Substack newsletter would be doing just fine and no readers would have to read any more “curious-metrics-on-Substack” articles.
***
While one should always celebrate life’s memorable victories, a little voice in my head did tell me, “This won’t last, Bill” … and it didn’t.
My “Logic, Jim” story - per official Substack metrics - was read by approximately 1,500 current subscribers and 1,500 non-subscribers.
For business-growth purposes, “the non-subscribers” have always been my “target audience” and this particular pool of non-subscribers produced one new free subscriber.
At the moment, my working hypothesis is that my total reader metrics are probably as dubious as Covid “case numbers” and the CPI’s official inflation rate.
It’s possible the vast majority of my target market - non-subscribers - are bots or made up out of thin air, which might explain why these readers are so different than Dr. Nass’s (real, live, human being) readers and never hit the subscribe button.
Still, the Titanic hasn’t gone completely under water and this case study (plate appearance) at least suggests that it might be possible for the Home Team to rally from a big deficit and slay Team Narrative Controllers.
When I was in the minors before I got called up to The Show, I once had a batting coach who gave me a great piece of advice.
“Keep swinging, Kid,” he told me. “You’ve got promise; don’t let any of the doubters stomp on your enthusiasm.”
Which became one of my Maxims or, these days, my guiding philosophy of life: “Post while you still can.”
Sometimes in life and even on Substack, you swing, look up, flip your bat toward the dugout and say, “Touch ‘em all, baby.”
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