Stick to baseball, 10/16/21.

My first dispatch from the Arizona Fall League is up now for subscribers to the Athletic. I’ll have probably one more post, a longer one that covers everything else I saw.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Riftforce, a great new two-player game that sort of combines Battle Line and Magic: the Gathering, if you can imagine that. It has a very high replay value as well, which is key in a two-player game.

With some more content out, I’ll get on my email newsletter as soon as I’m back from Arizona. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links, with a shorter list this week as I’ve been reading less while on the road…

• Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones explains why Adam Schefter was completely in the wrong to allow the subject of an article to see and approve that article before publication. Of course Darren Rovell defended it.
• One of you sent this along: Writing in Reason, Matt Welch explained how the government helped MLB wreck the minors, and how they can also help undo some of the damage. I tweeted this earlier in the week: If you care about minor league players, call your Representative and Senators and ask them to repeal the Save America’s Pastime Act. It’ll take you 5-10 minutes.
• Netflix has really fumbled its response to criticism from its own employees of the transphobic material in Dave Chappelle’s new comedy special.
• A prominent Australian anti-vaccine influencer put yellow stars of David on herself and her family last week, later deleting several of her social media accounts after people pointed out what an incredibly shitty, anti-Semitic move that was.
• Hold your surprise, but anti-vaxxers are misrepresenting a study on breakthrough cases in Vietnam.
• Police officers in Dayton, Ohio, dragged a paraplegic Black man from his car by his hair. The victim, Clifford Owensby, was charged with – wait for it – having tinted windows, and failing to have his son in a car seat. The officers in question have not been identified and you know damn well that means they haven’t been sanctioned, suspended, or fired.
• Via Craig Calcaterra: The Ohio Board of Education voted to rescind a resolution condemning racism. That’s right, kids: In Midwest Florida, racism isn’t bad any more!
• The University of Delaware tried to hush up a horrible sexual assault committed by one student against another, but had to acknowledge it when activists made the story go viral on TikTok. The school claimed it was a “domestic violence” incident that didn’t require that they notify the campus community.
• Also from a reader: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch discovered that a state health department database revealed social security numbers and other private information of some Missourians, so they notified the government, gave them time to fix the error, and then published a story. The Governor’s response: threaten to sue the paper for ‘hacking.’
• Podcaster and writer Michael Hobbes followed up on last week’s “bad art friend” longread by pointing out that it’s easy to see who the bad art friend is: Both of them.
• Nik Sharma, author of Seasons and The Flavor Equation, offered some tips to avoid ‘crying’ when dicing onions.
• A sort-of-reporter for an Ole Miss fan site published quotes from a player despite never talking to that player to get those quotes. The reporter has been fired and the site itself was rebranded without two of its former leaders.
• Board game news, starting with some Kickstarters of note: the train-and-stock game Union Station, the beautiful seed-planting game Gartenbau (Horticulture), and the set collection game Birdwatcher, which has a theme that seems a bit familiar to me.
• Upper Deck is running a contest with the top prize a free trip to Gen Con 2022. You have to submit a short video or a brief statement explaining why you are the ultimate ‘legendary gamer’ (meaning you love games a lot).