Stick to baseball, 5/20/17.

My one baseball post this past week was the annual ranking of the Top 25 MLB players under 25, which causes more “read the intro” violations than anything else I write every year. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday while in Minneapolis; I will do a quick eats post from there soon, but I’m about six topics behind here due to travel and lack of sleep.

For Paste, I reviewed the new puzzle game Shahrazad, which has a solo version and a two-player mode, both pretty clever with fantastic artwork and very few rules to learn.

My book, Smart Baseball, came out on April 25th from HarperCollins in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats. I traveled to Atlanta and the Twin Cities for readings/signings this past week, and am very grateful to all of you who came out to buy the book, have yours signed, or just say hello; we had 50+ folks at each event and Moon Palace Books sold out of the book Thursday night. Smart Baseball also got a very positive review from an unexpected source, the political site The Federalist.

I’m still sending out my email newsletter when I can, and the last edition, about some recent troubles I’ve had with my anxiety disorder and the medication I take for it, got the strongest response yet – so many replies and comments, in fact, that I haven’t been able to respond to the majority of them. I did see them all, though, and I really appreciate all the kind words.

And now, the links…

Comments

  1. Keith, just finished “Charlatan” and reading through Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” and I’m thinking there is somehow a book to be written that justapoxes Kahneman’s System One thinking process and the concept of charlatanism that explains our current Trump situation, particularly how he was even elected in the first place…Perhaps your next book?? ?

  2. Robert Sanchez

    This column is hilarious. It reads like a “progressive” manifesto. Democrats good, GOP bad. If the GOP advocated something that Mr. Law is in favor of, he’d probably do a 180, like the people who blamed Comey for HRC’S loss, that now love Comey, because Trump fired him & they must oppose everything that Trump does.

    • Oh, no, not you again.

    • If the GOP advocated something that Mr. Law is in favor of, he’d probably do a 180,

      There’s literally an item in here on regulatory overreach by the FDA; reducing regulations is a core tenet not just of the GOP but of this administration. So, you’re wrong, and you’re an idiot, and don’t come back.

    • Robert I love your posts but am always disappointed that you don’t sign off with Fucik’s “Entrance of the Gladiators.” Work on it.

    • But where are the clowns?
      There ought to be clowns
      Quick, send in the clowns

    • “If the GOP advocated something that Mr. Law is in favor of, he’d probably do a 180”
      So first you claim everything on here is “GOP=bad” but then if the GOP did a 180 and become “not bad” Keith would be in favor of it?
      NO SHIT SHERLOCK

  3. The GOP has really tried to promote the AHCA as being OK, as you’d expect. A cousin of mine was sent a link from Kentucky Rep. James Comer’s site that sought to dispel talking points that arose in the same general fashion. In fact, here’s the link: https://comer.house.gov/media/press-releases/setting-record-straight-american-health-care-act. I told my cousin privately to wait for the CBO report to come out before passing any final judgments. Hey, now that I think of it, did the CBO ever score the bill that was passed?

    • I don’t believe so. Last I heard, there was speculation that the House may actually need to revote on the bill if the CBO score comes back showing that the bill does not reduce the deficit since they are trying to push it through reconciliation.

  4. I believe the CBO score is expected to come out Tuesday or Wednesday. And Scott is right about it being possible the House will have to re-vote. Based on what Senate appears to be considering, I don’t see how this gets through reconciliation.

  5. Keith, next time you are in the Raleigh Durham NC area, you have to eat at Brunch Box (www.thebrunchbox.net/) near the airport and The Original Q Shack (www.theqshackoriginal.com/) near the Durham Bulls ballpark. You won’t be disappointed.

  6. Keith: Is there any way you can re-send (or post somewhere) the recent newsletter on anxiety? I am an anxiety sufferer myself but was not a subscriber until yesterday.

    • I’ll email it to you directly – is the address you used for that comment valid?

    • could i see it as well? thought i was already subscribed but apparently not. (i now am, definitely)

      email i used for the comment works

      thanks!

  7. Great read on ESP studies. Reminds me of the classic xkcd:

    https://xkcd.com/882/

  8. Here’s an interesting article about anxiety and baseball from two points of view: a player (Rick Ankiel) and a sportswriter.

    http://lithub.com/confronting-anxiety-through-baseball/

  9. re: The Atlantic article, a reader REALLY had to be missing the message of the article to get “touching” out of that story. The story was very well written and well told, but as the author went from young child to near adult to full-grown adult, the story went from a “simply” abhorrent tale of relatively-modern slavery to shameful.
    But more importantly, IMO, the story wasn’t about the damn author. I didn’t get the feeling he wrote it to be about himself; rather, I think it, like many stories told today, gets interpreted as being about the author, the author bragging, etc…

  10. re: The Atlantic article. This article needed to be written, but not by the slave owner (still true even if not by choice.) While I find it very difficult to fault the author for not notifying authorities, I also found some of the wording and perspective very disturbing. For example what the f*** is the point of explaining the relatively lower pay of an internist compared to other physicians. Obviously, Tizon knew there could be backlash for exposing this; if you’re not prepared to tell the story without defensive shit like this in it don’t write it.

    I was also deeply disturbed by the account of his mother’s last rites. Complicated situation, but even the remote suggestion that maybe his mother had regrets and was atoning in her own way is infuriating, and completely speculative on the part of the writer.

    If Tizon had a true sense of shame and regret for the actions of his family, why not pitch the story to another journalist to tell. It is truly sick that he and his family potentially benefited financially from his telling of the story,

    • I’m pretty sure the author died before the story was published, but obviously his family still could profited from the article

  11. Jon Hatfield

    You hate the White Sox because one of their fans posted something about you that was erroneous? Really?

    • It was a joke. Did you really come here just to ask that, rather than reading the email itself?

  12. Didn’t seem like a joke, with the words childish, petty, vitriol & whining being bandied about. Don’t think you were joking with that guy on twitter.

  13. Jon Hatfield

    Oh, so the twitter thing was just a jovial exchange then? My bad.