Nothing new at the Athletic this week as I finished writing up the top 50 free agents ranking, which will run shortly after the World Series ends.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Happy City, a light city-building card game that’s ideal for younger players, ages 8 and up, who aren’t quite ready for Splendor. If you’ve played Machi Koro, this has a similar vibe, but without the dice or the unbalanced cards.
My guest on my podcast this week was Christina Kahrl, who helped me preview the World Series and some of this winter’s free agent market. You can listen and subscribe to my podcast on Spotify or iTunes.
The latest issue of my email newsletter was about a hat – one that’s very important to me, though. 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…
- Longreads first: ProPublica has the story of how Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell and run for years by his ethically challenged son, discourages and dismisses students’ reports of rape and sexual assaults.
- Why is the idea of gender provoking such a backlash around the world? It’s an unholy alliance of religion, misogyny, and homophobia/transphobia, and feminists should not ally themselves with those trying to roll back progress on human rights.
- Steph Apstein spoke to multiple Native American leaders in asking why MLB still allows the “synchronized, team-sanctioned racism” of the tomahawk chop? Meanwhile, Rob Manfred totally whiffed when asked about the chop, lying about Native Americans’ views on it and landing on the wrong side of the issue.
- The Columbia Journalism Review published the second part of its series on paid advocacy groups writing content for local news outlets.
- The Posies broke up this week as multiple women accused lead singer Ken Stringfellow of sexual misconduct.
- That SEPTA (Philadelphia transit) rape incident where people watched and filmed the assault without calling the police? Yeah, the cops made that part up. The lesson here is to not take authorities at their word.
- Bobcat Goldthwait has some thoughts on the hoax that is “cancel culture.”
- A white man in Texas killed a Moroccan man who was sitting in a car in his own driveway. It took 11 days for authorities to arrest him.
- My colleague Levi Weaver called out the Rangers for their refusal to acknowledge LGBTQ+ fans. It’s outdated, it’s exclusionary, and it’s pandering to the wrong element.
- Meanwhile, the NAACP urged pro athletes to avoid signing with teams in Texas over the state’s rollbacks of reproductive, voting, and LGBTQ+ rights.
- Oh, and a Texas state rep who’s running for attorney general is trying to start a book-banning investigation of public schools in the state, demanding that schools disclose if they have any of eight hundred and fifty books – not in their curricula, but just in the buildings.
- Ohio isn’t that much better, as the Republican Governor forced out the Board of Education President who authored an anti-racism resolution that has since been repealed, because in Ohio, racism is good!
- Chevron’s ten-year vendetta against an environmental activist who exposed the company’s extensive pollution in Ecuador has led to the activist’s jailing on contempt charges. Steven Donziger has been under house arrest for over two years, all part of the company’s revenge against him for his exposé and the $9.5 billion judgment against them in Ecuador.
- Vaccinated people are 63% less likely to spread the delta variant of COVID-19 than unvaccinated people are.
- The bizarre backlash against critical race theory in elementary schools – where it’s never taught – was in reality an astroturfing campaign by conservative dark-money titan Charles Koch.
- Jim Squires, a Democrat running for the U.S. House in Texas’ 22nd district, held up a “The ‘Chop’ is Racist” sign at Game 2 of the World Series.