Stick to baseball, 11/20/21.

I had two new posts for subscribers to The Athletic this week, one on the Noah Syndergaard signing and one on the Eduardo Rodriguez signing.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Genotype, the latest boardgame from Genius Games, a company that creates games that incorporate real math/science concepts into its titles so they’re educational as well as fun. I think this is their best effort yet.

No podcasts this week, but my show will return next week. I did send out a new edition of my free email newsletter earlier this week. 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: New York has the inside story of reporter Felicia Sonmez’s lawsuit against her employer, the Washington Post, with some damning details about the now-retired executive editor Marty Baron, one of the heroes of Spotlight.

• North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) pardoned Dontae Sharpe, who was wrongfully convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and served 26 years for it, even though a key witness recanted her testimony just months after his trial.

• Sugar companies burn the fields as part of the harvest, which may be causing respiratory ailments in the south Florida communities around the sugar fields.

• The New Yorker looks at how little the Southern District of Georgia does for indigent people charged with federal crimes, and where judges have undue influence over the public defender’s office.

• Coffee, and specialty coffee in particular, is a Yemeni product, but the Yemeni people have not benefited from its explosion into a high-end product consumed around the world. Some Yemeni entrepreneurs in Brooklyn are trying to change that, with coffee shops that use Yemen-grown coffee – no mean feat given the chaos and devastation of seven years of civil war there.

• A Latino police officer in Joliet, Illinois, leaked official video that showed a colleague choking and slapping a suspect who was dying of a drug overdose. The police union’s response was to kick him out, and the DA has filed criminal charges against him.

• Law professor Dorit Reiss breaks down the Court of Appeals’ stay of President Biden’s vaccine mandate for large employers, saying the decision is based on dubious legal arguments.

• Could Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) lose in 2022, either in the primary or to independent challenger Evan McMullin?

• Cry me a river: People buying fake vaccine cards are getting scammed by fraudsters. What if, instead, they just got the safe, effective vaccine?

• Masks are the most effective non-pharmaceutical intervention at preventing the spread of COVID-19, according to a new meta-analysis published in the BMJ.

• Conspiracy theorists are moving from COVID-19 denialism to climate denialism. Once you’ve decided that evidence doesn’t matter, you can be convinced of anything.

• Wisconsin Republicans are trying to decertify the 2020 election and take over the state’s elections infrastructure. If you live there, are you okay with this?

• Meanwhile, Ohio Republicans in the state House have passed a ban on vaccine mandates. I thought Republicans opposed excessive government interference? I must be thinking of some other brand of Republicans.

• How should we deal with racism in popular children’s books?

• Remember that NYU economics prof who claimed only 500 Americans would die of COVID-19?

• Science fiction writers rejoice as a new study claims it might be possible to traverse great distances through space via wormholes.

• Board game news: iello, publisher of King of Tokyo, Decrypto, and this year’s Khôra, suddenly cut ties with its U.S. distributor iello USA.