Stick to baseball, 8/10/24.

I’ve been tied up the last few Saturdays with other things, so here’s a quick rundown of what you might have missed.

I wrote 14 different trade-deadline reaction pieces at the Athletic but there isn’t a single link to all of them beyond my author page, so if you missed anything that’s the place to start.

You can see my annual Gen Con recap post, which covers every game I saw at the convention plus my top ten games from the show and which this year ran over 10,000 words, over at Paste. I also reviewed the light family game Biomos, which I kind of liked when I first played it but eventually decided had too much randomness for me.

Stadium has changed its programming schedule and I’ll no longer be going to Chicago, but instead will be doing remote video work for them that will appear before their broadcasts of minor-league games (it’s all AAA games this month) or will show up on Amazon Echo devices and MSN. Unfortunately, I know several people lost their jobs in the changeover there, with some resources moving to the new Chicago Sports Network.

And now, the links – just some of the ones I saved over the last three weeks:

Stick to baseball, 6/17/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my annual ten-year redraft, looking back at the 2014 draft class, plus the annual column on first-rounders from that class who didn’t pan out.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the new deduction game Archeologic, which I thought was too easy to solve and didn’t offer any new mechanics to make me want to play it more.

I sent out another edition of my free email newsletter last week, detailing my misadventures with travel and phone alarms.

And now, the links…

  • The four members of R.E.M. were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and sat down with CBS’s Anthony Mason to discuss the honor, their careers, their opposition to a reunion, and more.

Stick to baseball, 6/8/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I updated my ranking of the top 50 prospects currently in the minor leagues and then wrote about five prospects who’ve fallen off so far this year. One of them, Adael Amador, is actually in the midst of a hilarious run where he’s hit 6 homers in his last 9 games after hitting just one in his first 37 games … and he’s still only hitting .194/.337/.329!

I’ll be back on Stadium on Monday for Diamond Dreams at 2 pm ET, one segment on Unpacked at around 2:40 pm ET, and possibly a segment on The Rally in the 5 o’clock hour.

I’m at Disharoon Park again today for game 2 of Kansas State vs. Virginia, so I’m rushing to get this posted. So now, the links…

  • You may have seen the piece in the New York Times op-ed section claiming evidence for the lab-leak hypothesis, written by an author who is not a virologist or epidemiologist and who has been flogging a book (co-authored with a climate-change denier) pushing the lab-leak deal for several years. Scientists have been picking it apart all week: Evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen posted this thread on BlueSky debunking Alina Chan’s terrible editorial, virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen did the same on Twitter, and biochemistry professor emeritus Larry Moran also debunked her points in a concise blog post. Chan is wrong, and we have copious evidence showing she’s wrong, but she persists – and she got a giant platform to sell her view.
  • House Republicans moved on from attacking Anthony Fauci to smearing Dr. Peter Hotez, a prominent voice in the pro-vaccine and pro-science movements who co-developed a low-cost vaccine against COVID-19.
  • The Columbia Law Review published a massive story from a Palestinian researcher on the Nakba that had been killed by the Harvard Law Review, but the CLR’s board of directors didn’t like it so they took down the journal’s entire website.
  • Hamilton Nolan explains that allowing the rich and powerful to opt out of public systems, like mass transit and public education, allows those systems to atrophy and discourages government from repairing them. I think it’s more complicated than that – if you have the money to afford life-saving medical care, should the government prevent you from receiving it? – but his point about mass transit seemed quite relevant given our country’s dismal record on that front.
  • Jared Kushner’s investment fund is in bed with the Serbian government – which is aligned with Russia and denies its role in the Bosnian genocide – in a construction project that will include a memorial to “victims of NATO aggression.”

Stick to baseball, 5/25/24.

One new post this week for subscribers to The Athletic, my ranking of the top 100 prospects in this year’s MLB Draft class. The Vance Honeycutt defenders have logged on, but they always seem to log back off when I explain why they’re too high on their guy.

I’ll be back on Stadium, in studio again, but on Tuesday this week due to the holiday and some travel on my end. Diamond Dreams airs at 2 pm ET, and I’ll likely do one segment as usual on Unpacked around 2:40. Both shows re-air often during the week, usually twice a day as far as I’ve been able to tell. You can watch via the app or with certain subscriptions to Youtube, Fubo, Roku, etc.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter this week, talking about my longtime hobby of playing the guitar and how beneficial I find it even though I’m usually playing for nobody but myself, as well as a little note on the adult I have successfully created after 18 years of hard work.

And now, the links…

  • From March, this video from Rabbi Daniel Bogard looks at why American Jews feel connected to Israel; it’s part one of a very informative series on American Jewish culture and identity at a time when that has become incorrectly equated with Zionism.
  • International negotiations on a treaty to try to prevent the next pandemic broke down due to nationalist and anti-science sentiments. The World Health Organization’s Global Health Law director argued that “Donald Trump is in the room” and if Trump wins he’d likely “torpedo” any future negotiations.
  • Police in Fontana, California, used “psychological torture” to get a man who reported his father missing to confess to stabbing and killing him … except his father was still alive and unharmed. The city will now direct nearly $900,000 of taxpayer money to Thomas Perez, Jr., for the pain and distress inflicted on him, during which police also told him they were killing his dog and led him to try to hang himself in custody. What I don’t see is whether any of these officers were fired or even disciplined.
  • Two board game crowdfunding efforts of note: Stupor Mundi, the newest title from the designer of Darwin’s Journey and Newton, funded in about four hours; it looks like it might be a little lighter in weight than Nestore Mangone’s previous releases.
  • And Feudum, a 2018 game with a listed weight on Boardgamegeek of 4.58 out of 5 (!), has a crowdfunding page for a new edition that is over $300K raised. I actually hadn’t heard of this game, probably because anything of that weight and a playing time over two hours is of little to no interest to me.

Stick to baseball, 10/21/23.

My second Arizona Fall League notebook went up on Monday, covering everyone of note whom I hadn’t written up in the first one. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

I appeared on TSN 1050 in Toronto to talk about the League Championship Series and the Blue Jays, including prospect Ricky Tiedemann and the controversial decision to replace José Berrios with Yusie Kikuchi in what turned out to be their last playoff game.

And now, the links…

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…

Stick to baseball, 9/21/19.

My one ESPN+ column this week looked at players I was wrong about, including Shane Bieber and Jeff McNeil. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday and a Periscope video chat on Tuesday.

I discussed details of my new book, due out in April 2020 from HarperCollins, in this week’s edition of my free email newsletter. You can pre-order the book already on amazon.

I joined the East Village Times podcast to talk about the Padres’ farm system this week.

And now, the links…