For subscribers to the Athletic, I wrote another scouting blog, looking at some Phillies, Orioles, Nats, and White Sox prospects, including the four big arms the Phillies had at Jersey Shore; and did a quick breakdown of some of the highlights and omissions from the Futures Game rosters. I’ll have an updated, final Big Board for the draft on Sunday, and then a new mock draft on Monday.
Over at Paste, I reviewed Ouch!, a fun, silly game for kids as young as five, and pointed out why it works where games like Candyland, my bête noire among children’s board games, fail.
My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Eric Longenhagen, for an extensive conversation about this month’s MLB draft. You can subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I found my voice again and sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week. Also, my two books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game, are both available in paperback, and you can buy them at your local independent book store or at Bookshop.org.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: The New England Journal of Medicine has a long story on vaccine hesitancy and how we might combat it.
- Inside Higher Ed looks at the Great Resignation in academia, as even tenured professors leave their universities due to burnout, lack of institutional support, or greater financial opportunities elsewhere.
- New York talks about how NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) has shown no evidence of a clear philosophy of governing.
- Jessica Luther, co-author of Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, wrote for Vox about the myth of “fairness” in sports and how transphobes are using it to further their anti-trans agenda.
- Two law professors wrote on LawFareBlog that Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony changed their minds on whether former President Trump should be indicted.
- The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik reviews Daniel Levin Becker’s new book on rap and rhyme, called What’s Good, and writes in praise of the variety of forms and styles of rhyming.
- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong writes in the Atlantic that we have stopped caring about the pandemic, and that leads to our inevitable defeat, where SARS-CoV-2 will kill hundreds of thousands of people a year and nobody will do anything to stop it.
- Vanity Fair has the story of the great video game heist of 2019, where a collection estimated to be worth over $1 million was stolen and eventually recovered, but where many of these extremely rare Nintendo games were badly damaged by the incompetent thief.
- The Washington Post ran an excerpt from the new book American Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry, detailing parts of the lobbying campaign to keep the DEA from shutting down opioid suppliers.
- The Verge’s Nilay Patel interviewed the TSA’s Chief Innovation Officer, asking some insightful questions about PreCheck and the relationship between data privacy and increased security. Patel also used one of my favorite phrases, security theater, which also applies to the metal detectors that are ubiquitous now at major sporting events.
- U.S. road fatality rates are rising. One big reason is the increase in distractions in your car, or as this article puts it, “The problem is asking the brain to do too many things at once.”
- What is the point of Sunday political news shows? They’re little more than propaganda vehicles, putting profit over accuracy.
- The Internal Revenue Service didn’t notice that 76 registered charities all shared the same mailbox. Needless to say, it was all a scam.
- An evangelical pastor who used to lead a religious right organization has bragged about wining and dining three current SCOTUS justices, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia, to try to sway their views on issues like LBGTQ+ rights and abortion. Above The Law has more on this story, pointing out that the same group that prays with these justices also files amicus briefs with the court.
- Jonathan Chait wrote about Blake Masters, who is running against Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for the latter’s Senate seat, calling Masters “Nazi-adjacent” and another sign of the GOP’s trend toward extremism.
- The New Republic called Pamela Paul’s latest op ed for the New York Times her version of Great Replacement Theory, with an amalgam of anti-trans talking points common to the right and to gender-critical feminists.
- Brynn Tannehill, author of American Fascism, called Paul’s column and those like it part of the right’s plan to demonize trans people the way the Nazi Party demonized Jews.
- At the Raw Story, Thom Hartmann writes that the SCOTUS majority is planning to “pre-rig” the 2024 election.
- Herschel Walker hid his two secret kids from his own campaign staff.
- The Harvard Business School’s site posted a breakdown of the implosion of artisan ice cream maker Ample Hills. The founders expanded too soon, both in scale and geography, and didn’t pay attention to short-term cash flow.
- Leon County School District near Tallahassee passed its own don’t-say-gay “guide” for teachers, which requires parental notification if a student who is “open about their gender identity” is in their child’s PE class or on an overnight field trip. So the school will be outing kids to the entire community.
- Also in Florida, the state’s Florida Healthy Kids Board kicked off a pediatrician for taking a public pro-vaccine view, which puts her in line with (checks notes) every major medical and scientific body in the world.
- A Detroit police officer was shot and killed in the line of duty, and the Police Chief said there is too much gun violence in the city.
- Texas’s soi-disant “Freedom Caucus” is threatening companies that help employees travel out of state for medical procedures.
- Kentucky Gov. Andy Brashear released emails about President Biden’s plan to nominate an anti-abortion judge to a lifetime district court appointment in that state.
- My editor at Paste wrote about the Hyperspace Lounge, a cocktail bar on a Disney cruise ship with a $5000 drink on the menu.
- You do not, in fact, have a constitutional right to have dinner.
- A particle physicist wrote about the possible discoveries in Run 3 of the Large Hadron Collider.
- I haven’t seen a good link on this yet, but Alea/Ravensburger have announced a new version of the board game Puerto Rico called Puerto Rico 1897, which tries to eliminate the rather questionable elements of the original game, not least the use of “colonists” who, in historical terms, were slaves, and who in the game were unfortunately represented by dark brown discs.
It boggles my mind how little coverage there has been about the SC granting cert to hear Harper. That means 4 justices are at least open to the argument. We know Thomas (who if he had any ethics would abstain) and Alito were almost certainly two of the four. However it also means at least two of Gorusch, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Roberts granted cert. You have to figure Breyer wouldn’t leave that for Ketanji and that Sotomayor and Kagan wouldn’t even hear the case because they view it as absurd. If we assume the four justices who granted cert are all in favor, that means we need Roberts and one of the Trump appointed justices (one of whom at least argued for the Florida case in 2000) to do the right thing. People should be very alarmed at what the SC might do in 11 months.
Agreed. I’m terrified that this decision will provide state legislatures with legal cover to ignore their federal election results. The end culmination of illiberal democracy in the US.
A center-left NY Times op-ed draws Nazi comparisons? That’s when you know you’ve lost the argument.
That’s a rhetorical claim that doesn’t address the specific criticisms therein. This is the totalitarian playbook – find a minority group to blame for some real or pretended societal ills. The Nazis did it with Jews and other minority groups. Now it’s trans people specifically, but LGBTQ+ people in general.
Pamela Paul ain’t center left buddy
Trans groups have done a great job at convincing progressives that any criticism of parts of their agenda equate to trans phobia. At a time when abortion rights are getting wiped out, maybe the main concern shouldn’t be worrying about how inclusive the wording is.
What exactly is the trans agenda? The right to be left alone and treated like normal human beings?
Is that a serious question? Because the agenda sure is more than that. Regardless of what any of us think about transgender athletes, it’s an extremely contentious issue and allowing them to play female sports is quite the minority opinion. Treating those that don’t agree with those opinions, even if they agree with all other rights trans people should be afforded, as transphobic sure doesn’t help any cause.
This isn’t about sports. That’s part of the grift here: It’s the fake issue they’re using to rally anti-trans support across the spectrum.
Mark, you really can’t see how this game is being played? First it was “men” (i.e. transwomen) are gonna go into female restrooms and start sexually assaulting girls. Now it’s “men” (i.e. transwomen) are gonna dominate all of our sports if they’re allowed to compete. The whole game is trying to other transwomen as a real threat. There are two problems with that. Transpeople are more likely to be sexually assaulted and hurt themselves more. Two it’s created an erasure effect of transmen as if they don’t or shouldn’t exist. This is all about creating the wedge to get rid of many gay rights issues by starting with the biggest other and smallest group. You are falling for it.
To any trans people, I might’ve offended with my previous comment I apologize. I realize my wording was bad to put it mildly. I was trying to characterize how transphobic people view transgendered people and used some wording that was harmful. That was awful on my part. I apologize.
In Connecticut two trans women athletes did dominate high school track. Questions and concerns with how to handle that aren’t all born out of hatred or for a desire to wipe away all rights for transgender people. Grouping any and all criticisms of the agenda to push for full inclusion in sports as just another part of the right’s strategy to demonize the trans community just alienates people that actually may be on your side for all other trans issues and also ignores an issue that doesn’t really have an easy solution or ions that isn’t so evidently obvious.
That’s literally a small sample size. Also let’s not pretend this game is new. Amelie Mauresmo was accused of being a man in 1999 (or at least too masculine to play with women) after she won the Australian Open. Or we could ask Caster Semenya (an intersex female) about all the abuse she has gotten to the point where an arbitrary standard for the acceptable amount of testosterone in women’s events was created for the sole purpose of excluding her. I agree there aren’t any easy solutions. However again, it’s the crack to going back down the road of demonizing transwomen specifically. Also as I’ve pointed out, the demonization ignores and literally erases intersex, non binary people, and transmen from the equation. Gee I wonder why that is. Don’t fall for the right’s trap. That’s what a lot of the criticisms about Pamela Paul have been pointing out.
From the linked Vox article, Brenda Elsey acknowledges the historical challenges in carving out a sporting space for women and girls, and then says “Even if you think your sport is going to go down the toilet by being inclusive, you have to do it anyway because that’s the moral imperative.” This (from a trans advocate, mind you) delineates the issue in the way I believe most of the genuine stakeholders in these sports are thinking about it. Not in a “first they came for…” rhetorical slippery-slope sense, but as a distinct issue in an arena that has required conscious nurturing and advocacy in order to exist at all. In her formulation, the non-discriminatory imperative drives the bus, period, even if that means driving it off a cliff. Is it any real surprise that many directly involved parties are wary of the risk?
I admit I haven’t gone far into the weeds of testing regimens, but I support the general idea of non-invasive testing to determine eligibility, with a greater tendency to lean towards trans inclusion in women’s sports than in girls’. I do believe that Caster Semenya was wronged.
I’m late to the party so probably nobody will see this, but the trans/sports thing has been bugging me for a while so I just wanted to put in my 2 cents: The sports argument is totally different than the bathroom access argument. The bathroom thing was just fear and ignorance. There’s a legitimate discussion around sports, and the fact that there are ignorant people siding against the trans girls doesn’t mean discrimination is the only motivation here. First: kids’ sports are about inclusion, fun, friendship, etc… At that level there should be no issues with trans kids or anything else, just let the kids play.
Once you get to high school that changes: sports are about competition. No more participation trophies, no more “everybody gets equal time on the field”, you play to win and the lessons you learn are based around winning and losing. Girls teams are set up to protect a disadvantaged group, just like age groups and weight classes in some sports. So if trans girls don’t fit the criteria to qualify for that protected group, they have to compete in the open (men’s) division. Some girls already compete in boys sports (either because they’re good enough to “level-up” or because a girls’ team doesn’t exist for that sport), what is wrong with trans girls doing the same? They’re not being banned from competing, they’re just not allowed to compete in a division where they have an unfair advantage.