Stick to baseball, 11/2/24.

My ranking of the top 50 free agents available this offseason is now up for subscribers to the Athletic; we’ve updated it now to reflect two players on the list coming off the board as their clubs picked up their options, adding two new players to keep it at 50. I also held a Q&A on the Athletic site on Friday to talk about the list.

For Paste, I reviewed Stamp Swap, a light new game from Stonemaier Games, whose products always have excellent components and art. The game play was meh for me – it was mostly stuff I’ve seen before, and in one case I think a mechanic just makes the game worse/slower.

I need to get another issue of my free email newsletter out soon, but got held up by the FA rankings and the relative lack of sleep I had thanks to the World Series.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 1/8/22.

My latest game review for Paste covers the great, easy-to-learn Super Mega Lucky Box, from the designer of Silver & Gold and Sushi Go! It has elements of both games, and will remind non-gamers of bingo enough to get them started. We played this over the holidays with my family, and everyone liked it, from my 9-year-old niece to my mother, who generally does not like games.

My prospect rankings are still on track to start running on The Athletic on January 31st, leading off with the top 100, with team-by-team rankings following afterwards. My podcast will also return this upcoming week.

And now, the links…

  • The Guardian hasan excerpt of Michael Pollan’s most recent book, This is Your Mind on Plants, asking whether we should be giving up caffeine. (The answer is “no,” whether Pollan knows it or not.)
  • This Hidden Brain episode titled “Both Things Can Be True,” about dealing with the apparent contradictions we find in other people, is a remarkable and compelling story in its own right, and also feels especially apposite in the wake of the recent Hall of Fame vote. You can also find it on iTunes.
  • Is there really enough taste difference among different varieties of rice to justify an annual rice-tasting competition? The mere question would be heretical in Japan.
  • Climate change is coming for everyone and every industry, including pro sports. Hannah Keyser asks if MLB is ready for it.
  • “America’s Frontline Doctors” are a giant fraud, as its members haven’t worked on the front lines against COVID-19 and profit off quack treatments like hydroxychloroquine.
  • A Deputy DA in California who was expected to run for the state Assembly this year has died of COVID-19 at age 46, just weeks after speaking an anti-vax/anti-mandate rally.
  • I don’t especially care that an Australian writer doesn’t like board game nights, but what possible aim is there to writing a piece that does nothing but shit on something thousands of people enjoy?
  • The New York Times‘ David Streitfeld has a post mortem of sorts on the Theranos trial, with an eye on the people who failed to ask Elizabeth Holmes the obvious questions about her technology that didn’t work. John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood has quite a bit more on this in its history of the con.
  • Alec Karakatsanis, founder of the Civil Rights Corps, has been critical of mainstream media outlets’ slanted coverage of police shootings. He had a Twitter thread this week calling out the New York Times for its framing and for use of biased sources when covering a recent shooting in LA, pointing out that police unions and departments spend a lot of money to try to get this kind of positive coverage.
  • Asmodee’s Unexpected Games division announced a new title, Voices in My Head, where players try to play aspects of a suspected thief’s persona against the one player who plays the prosecutor.

Stick to baseball, 12/14/19.

I was busy these last two weeks, with numerous reaction pieces for ESPN+ subscribers.

I also held a Klawchat, probably my last of 2019, on Friday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the new small-box game Ankh’or, which plays up to four but works nicely with two, and wrote up the best games I saw in two days at PAX Unplugged (before my daughter got sick and we had to skip day three #sadface).

My second book, The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, comes out on April 21st, 2020. You can pre-order it here, and I have tentative appearances for that week at Politics & Prose (DC), Midtown Scholar (Harrisburg), and One More Page (Arlington, VA).

My free email newsletter will return in the next few days – sorry, I got sick, then the winter meetings happened – and you can sign up here.

And now, the links…