My two ESPN+ posts this week covered a slew of low-A and short-season prospects for the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, and Orioles, including Roansy Contreras and a third look at Grayson Rodriguez; and my wrapup of this year’s Under Armour game, full of high school prospects for the 2020 draft. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.
At the moment, it looks like I’ll be in Bristol on Wednesday for ESPN’s Trade Deadline special, driving home that night and flying out to Gen Con the following morning. That probably spikes a chat for this week, but I’ll return for one on the 7th or 8th.
You can still subscribe to my free email newsletter to get additional writing, typically of a more personal nature than what you find elsewhere. My deepest thanks to all of you who sent such kind replies to my most recent newsletter, and a seriously-fuck-off to the one guy who decided it was a good time to be an ass to me.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: The Atlantic looks at why so many rape cases go unprosecuted or even uninvestigated: Because men still don’t believe women.
- “The Most Gullible Man in Cambridge,” from New York‘s The Cut, lives up to its title and then some – it’s a con story, but also a head-scratcher that an intelligent man could be such an easy mark.
- Say it ain’t so, Mo: Mariano Rivera is a Trump supporter and has aligned himself with an anti-Semitic pastor who says Jews deserve blame for their own genocide at the hands of Nazi Germany. Rivera spoke to the New York Daily News after the first story appeared but reaffirmed his views.
- Women face a substantial obstacle in their careers, regardless of type: gender roles in our society give them little time to themselves. Women are still expected to handle the lion’s share of the family responsibilities, even at the expense of their vocations or creative potential.
- Dutch parents have long engaged in “dropping” their teenaged children, sending them into the woods in small groups at night and telling the kids to find their own way back to base camp.
- Wyoming Valley West school district, northwest of Philadelphia, made news by threatening to send kids to foster care over unpaid school lunch debts, and then turned down a $22,000 offer from the founder of La Colombe Coffee to clear those debts. Maybe it’s not about the money after all.
- Ed Kilgore’s piece in New York on the argument against impeaching Trump even if you believe he’s guilty of obstruction is worth reading, even though I still come down on the side of impeachment.
- Three Ole Miss students posed with guns in front of a shot-up Emmett Till memorial, which somehow doesn’t violate the school’s code of conduct.
- Singer Nick Cave had a rather wonderful response after someone referred to his fans as “pretentious fat lesbians.”
- Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, a major driver of anthropogenic climate change, also lead to reduced nutrition levels in rice.
- Your bagged salads or lettuces may, on rare occasions, also include reptiles or amphibians, alive, dead, or perhaps in pieces.
- I was relieved to see my friend Will Leitch had a very positive review of Tarantino’s latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
- The Hidden Brain podcast had an episode on vaccine refusal and other kinds of denialism called Facts Aren’t Enough.
- Renegade Games announced an upcoming title based on Katie O’Neill’s graphic novel The Aquicorn Cove. It’s a cooperative title listed for ages 10+, although the book is aimed at readers aged 7 and up.