→ August 28, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 8/28/21.

Nothing new from me at the Athletic this week as I’m still dealing with an illness in the family, but I hope to have my next piece up on Thursday of this upcoming week.

I reviewed the board game adaptation of Red Rising for Paste this week, and also reviewed the book from which the game is derived.

I created a T-shirt celebrating the #umpshow to raise money to help Afghan refugees who are settling in the Wilmington area. Proceeds will go to Jewish Family Services of Delaware – they’re aware a donation is coming – and possibly a second group depending on how best we can help. We’re over $650 raised through T-shirt sales, not counting the handful of you who’ve donated directly to JFSD, so thanks to all of you who’ve bought the shirt or donated.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to CHVRCHES’ Lauren Mayberry about their new album, Screen Violence, which came out yesterday; as well as the toxic environment of social media, working with Robert Smith, and more. You can (and should!) subscribe on iTunes and Spotify. I also appeared as usual on the Friday edition of the Athletic Baseball Daily show.

I’ll be back with an email newsletter and I hope a chat this upcoming week. And don’t forget that my second book The Inside Game is now out in paperback.

And now, the links…

  • The New Yorker profiled my colleague Katie Strang, who has become the industry’s leading writer on athletes and coaches accused of domestic violence or sexual assault.
  • Dr. J. Stacey Klutts, a clinical associate professor of pathology and clinical microbiology at the University of Iowa, wrote a great primer on what we know now about the Delta variant. The Des Moines Register should have asked him to write an editorial, not the unqualified grad student and COVID-19 minimizer they invited instead.
  • Many professors are leaving their jobs rather than teach in-person, especially at schools that won’t require masks or vaccines. Some schools are, of course, prevented from issuing such mandates because of the death cult running their states.
  • More U.S. police officers died of COVID-19 in 2020 than from all other causes combined. Yet I keep seeing reports of officers and even union chapters fighting vaccine mandates.
  • A new lawsuit accusing Horatio Sanz of grooming and abusing a teenage girl that names him, Saturday Night Live, and NBC may blow the lid off a bigger story about the culture on that show and impugn other cast members from that time, notably Jimmy Fallon.
  • Facebook refused two Representatives’ request for more information on the company’s (minimal) efforts to fight COVID-19 misinformation on its platform. I found multiple groups dedicated to the deworming drug Ivermectin, including at least two that purport to help people get prescriptions for it, active on Facebook just this week. Reporting them has had no apparent effect.
  • Eagle-Gryphon Games has brought us a new(ish) title from the late designer Sid Sackson, combining elements of his games The Great Race and Can’t Stop into Route 66 The Mother Road, now on Kickstarter and already well past its funding goal.
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→ August 21, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 8/21/21.

Two new posts since the last roundup for subscribers to the Athletic – my list of the five farm systems that have improved the most since February; and a scouting blog from two weekends ago covering some Rays, O’s, Nats, and Tigers prospects. I’ve been unable to do much this past week due to an illness in the family, but hope to be back on the road this upcoming week.

On the board game front, I had three reviews go up earlier this month. At Paste, I reviewed the great new family game Juicy Fruits and the midweight game CloudAge. For Polygon, I reviewed the upcoming second edition of Great Western Trail, which is still the top-rated complex game on my overall rankings.

On of the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to one of my favorite authors, Jasper Fforde, author of sixteen books, including The Constant Rabbit; and then had old pal Joe Sheehan as a guest this week.. And on The Athletic Baseball Show, I got the band back together with Eric Karabell. You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify.

My newsletter is getting back on track, although I didn’t send one this week since I didn’t write anything for any other sites beyond my own. You should sign up, though. Or you might consider buying my book, The Inside Game, now out in paperback.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Ed Yong, whose coverage of the pandemic for The Atlantic (not my employer) won him a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize, writes about how the pandemic is now likely to end: with a long, tapering whimper, rather than a bang. And much of it is our own stupid fault.
  • A new journal article in Cell looks at all of the evidence on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and concludes that a zoonotic origin is far more likely than a so-called “lab leak.”
  • ProPublica reveals just how much some high-income donors saved in taxes by helping fund the 2017 GOP Tax Bill. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a major science denialist, was particularly helpful to his wealthy supporters.
  • The Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction has released their report, titled What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction. Setting aside the question of whether it goes as far as it needs to go, the report doesn’t shy away from blaming U.S. policymakers who believed we could build a nation, threw good money after bad, and had perhaps the most expensive case of the planning fallacy in history.
  • What can you do in the wake of last week’s apocalyptic report on the climate? Anything at all. Just do something.
  • A reader contribution: The Guardian profiles the woman who goes through NYC residents’ garbage and highlights their waste and profligacy on social media.
  • The Washington Post tells the awful story of a Missouri widow who lost her husband to COVID-19 and is now facing financial ruin.
  • I missed this in June, but a bill to legalize cannabis in Delaware failed over concerns that it wouldn’t create sufficient racial equity in the resulting system. Given how disproportionately cannabis laws have affected Black residents of Delaware (and all states), I think it’s worth crafting a bill that ensures they’ll share in the spoils of the new industry.
  • College officials are concerned about students showing fake vaccination cards rather than complying with vaccine mandates. The answer to that seems to be simple – use a fake card, get expelled, no refunds.
  • The Federation of State Medical Boards’ Board of Directors issued a statement that said that medical professionals who spread COVID-19 misinformation should lose their licenses. I’ll believe it when I see someone actually lose their license, but this is a good warning, at least.
  • A law professor writes that vaccine mandates are legal as well as based on solid science.
  • And that’s good, because the Nevada Board of Health just voted to require COVID-19 vaccines for college students in the state.
  • The anti-vaccine grift might be becoming untenable. The victims of cons are often unwilling to admit that they’ve been conned. A little help from law enforcement wouldn’t hurt, though.
  • Plenty of COVID deniers and minimizers like to claim that the virus has little effect on children (or did, pre-Delta). That’s highly misleading and takes advantage of a cognitive illusion called the contrast effect.
  • A spate of fabricated research papers hit certain academic journals this spring, and they were only caught because of certain “tortured phrases” (“colossal information” instead of “big data”) that caught other researchers’ eyes.
  • That Indiana doctor behind the viral video where he repeats anti-vaccine myths won’t even admit if he’s vaccinated and isn’t board-certified in any specialty. He should lose his license, though, because he’s full of shit.
  • Wilmington has a great little restaurant scene for such a small city, and for my money, Bardea is the best restaurant we’ve got. It’s improved even more since the pandemic began, as chef-owner Antonio DiMeo has been experimenting with koji and other fermentation techniques to boost flavors and create a more plant-forward menu.
  • The board game café chain Snakes & Lattes hired decorated chef Aaron McKay as COO as they try to establish the cafés as food destinations, not just board game spots where you get chicken tenders and soggy fries.
  • Chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that has long been linked to neurological damage in children, will finally be banned for use on food products after the Trump administration ignored scientists’ pleas to prohibit it.
  • This seems like it should be bigger news: A U.S. lab claims it has approached the goal of nuclear fusion ignition, using a laser to start a fusion reaction in hydrogen fuel that could become self-sustaining, providing enough heat to keep the fuel mass at a high enough temperature for fusion to continue. In theory, it’s a potential source of clean, limitless energy. It sounds too good to be true.
  • In a similar vein, did Google Labs really create “time crystals,” an entirely new phase of matter that would be a huge leap forward towards the goal of real quantum computing?
  • Board game news: Cranio Creations announced a new deluxe edition of the classic worker placement game Lorenzo il Magnifico.
  • Capstone announced pre-orders for Corrosion , a new game where your machines can rust and become useless, which I love as a concept and which also reminds me of a key plot point in Baldur’s Gate.
  • Publisher Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG) laid off its entire staff last week and appears to be entering bankruptcy.
  • I don’t remember the 2007 game Get Bit!, but it’s getting a brand-new edition, now on Kickstarter.
  • And finally, this was highly entertaining. What better way to mock a lunatic than by setting his deranged words to music? (There’s some great guitar work here, too.)
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→ August 8, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 8/8/21.

My one new post this week for subscribers to The Athletic is a long scouting notebook with my observations on players from the Nats, Rays, Orioles, and Tigers’ systems, including five former first-round picks. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I spoke to Dr. Katy Milkman, author of the new book How to Change, about we can use psychology and knowledge of how our brains work to enact real, lasting behavior change in ourselves. You can subscribe via iTunes or Spotify. And on the Athletic Baseball Show, I got back together with my old Baseball Today partner in crime Eric Karabell (also on Spotify).

My email newsletter will return this week, and I’m going to give away a copy of a new board game (the publisher sent me two copies, so I offered to do a giveaway and they were on board, get it?) to one random subscriber.

And now, the links…

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→ July 31, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 7/31/21.

I had a lot of content this week around the trade deadline for subscribers to The Athletic, including:

I also wrote up my notes from a game between the Yankees’ and Pirates’ AA affiliates. I was planning to do a chat but the pace of trades made that impossible.

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Slate‘s Josh Levin, talking about his One Year: 1977 podcast episode about baseball broadcaster Mary Shane and his book The Queen. You can subscribe on iTunes and Spotify.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Whistle Mountain, a medium-heavy worker placement game from the designer of the train game Whistle Stop.

I returned to my email newsletter, with a note on why I’ve been absent from there and largely from here over the last six weeks. Also, my second book The Inside Game is out in paperback and available from bookshop.org or wherever you buy books.

And now, the links…

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→ July 17, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 7/17/21.

All of my draft coverage is now up for subscribers to The Athletic, including my team-by-team draft recaps, posted by division:
• AL East
• AL Central
• AL West
• NL East
• NL Central
• NL West

I also recapped the Futures Game with notes on prospects who stood out or who I saw for the first time. I held a Klawchat on Friday.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: A new preprint on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 states that “there is substantial body of scientific evidence supporting a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2” and “there is currently no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has a laboratory origin.” This failed hypothesis isn’t just the province of the right-wing; the anti-GMO movement has also latched on to it.
  • A conservative activist invented the nontroversy over critical race theory. If someone tells you CRT is bad, just ask them to name an author who’s written about it, or a book on the subject. Like this Alabama columnist did to a state lawmaker.
  • This ran a few weeks ago, during my hiatus from these posts, but former sportswriter Kat O’Brien detailed how she was raped by a major league ballplayer while she was on the Rangers beat.
  • Influencers who peddle anti-vaccine misinformation are raking in cash from their efforts. It’s almost entirely a grift, with a societal cost measured in bodies.
  • The Delta variant’s threat explained in three simple points by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong.
  • The “mystery Chinese seeds” that made the rounds of the news last summer? Probably just a brushing scam.
  • Why don’t we have a vaccine against Lyme disease? It’s complicated. Anti-vaxxers, a dubious claim about side effects, and the regional nature of the disease all contributed.
  • A nurse in Louisiana who posted anti-vaccine views and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines has, in fact, died of COVID-19.
  • Poynter spoke to Walter Hussman, the conservative megadonor to UNC who led the school to deny Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure and ultimately cost them her services. He doesn’t think he did anything wrong, but also disputes some of the story that’s been publicly reported.
  • MEL magazine is coming back.
  • A power plant in upstate New York is primarily powering a bitcoin mining operation, warming Seneca Lake and polluting the air (as well as contributing to climate change). I’m not sure what the solution is – taxing bitcoin is the most rational economic move, but tricky because of its nature – but cryptocurrencies are an environmental threat that demands some sort of government action.
  • Why did three people in different states contract the often-fatal tropical bacterial disease melioidosis?
  • The state of Alabama took a man’s gun after he shot his wife. Nine months later, they gave it back to him, despite a protection order, and he used it to kill her. I’m sure the fact that he was a cop had nothing to do with this.
  • Men read far fewer books by women than women do. This has real-world implications for the way readers’ minds work.
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→ June 5, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 6/5/21.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I did my annual redraft column, looking back at the best players from the 2011 draft class, as well as the first-rounders who didn’t work out.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Umbra Via, an afterlife-themed game with route-building elements that just did not click for us at all.

My free email newsletter has returned, with my first edition in over a month, where I explain why I just haven’t felt much like writing lately – an unusual feeling for me.

My second book, The Inside Game, is now out in paperback, and I don’t think I’m just being a buy-my-book marketing guy when I suggest that it would make a great Father’s Day gift. Midtown Scholar still has a few signed copies of the paperback available, and you can buy the book via bookshop or amazon or anywhere else you buy books.

And now, the links…

  • There’s growing evidence that UNC’s decision not to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah Jones was driven by the interference and objections of mega-donor Walter Hussman, Jr, for whom their journalism school is named. In one email to a board member, he wrote that “he was concerned about how Hannah-Jones’s work could clash with his vision for the school and what it teaches.”
  • A group of unvaccinated staffers at a Houston hospital have filed a lawsuit against the hospital’s vaccine mandate, aided by a Houston lawyer with a long history of deranged legal actions including homophobic and anti-trans moves. I can’t speak to the legal issues here, but the plaintiff’s claims (e.g., that the vaccine can alter your DNA, which, come the fuck on already) are crazy, and if a hospital can’t mandate vaccinations, we are going to have to live with the pandemic forever.
  • Sharyl Attkisson, a faux-journalist who has spread anti-vaccine disinformation for years and made the news in 2020 when she tried to air an interview with a conspiracy theorist who claimed COVID-19 was the product of a secret a government plan, is threatening to sue Dr. Peter Hotez, author of Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, for defamation, a baseless threat aimed at silencing one of the most vocal and erudite advocates of vaccination.
  • A new editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine explores incentives for increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake, including mandating it in health care settings, requiring it for access to events that “involve close person-to-person contact,” and raising life and health insurance premiums for people who refuse to get the shot. I’m a big fan of the last approach: people respond strongly to financial incentives, and those of us who have gotten vaccinated shouldn’t be subsidizing those who won’t.
  • We loved Mare of Easttown, especially since we caught many of the local references, living just a mile or two away from the border between Delaware (state) and Delaware County. The show’s depictions of the residents of DelCo, however, isn’t very accurate. That county has historically been quite red, with deep racial tensions going back to the Civil War.
  • The best reaction I saw this week to the French Open telling Naomi Osaka that she can go fuck herself was from the Guardian‘s Jonathan Liew, arguing that we in sports media are not the good guys here, and that press conferences are problematic. Indeed, the day after Osaka withdrew, some asshole reporter asked 17-year-old Coco Gauff an insulting, racist question that should have gotten his credentials yanked. (Apparently that only happens if you dial into a press conference from a supermarket.) Scottish tennis coach Judy Murray, mother of two tennis champions in Andy and Jamie Murray, supported Osaka and talked about the absurd demands of the press on players.
  • New York Times health writer Tara Parker-Pope writes about four lessons we’ve learned in the last year for your anxious brain. Strengthening your connections seems like an especially valuable one in a year when most connections have become slack (pun intended).
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→ May 29, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/29/21.

I had two posts this week for subscribers to the Athletic: my first mock draft of 2021, and a scouting post on high school pitchers Chase Petty and Frank Mozzicato, both of whom will be day-one picks. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste last week, I reviewed Cryo, a really engaging new worker-placement game from the designers of Manhattan Project: Energy Empire, where resources are always limited and you have to build your board to maximize your resource collection.

If you’d like to buy The Inside Game and support my board game habit, Midtown Scholar has a few signed copies still available. You can also buy it from any of the indie stores in this twitter thread, all of whom at least had the book in stock earlier this month. If none of those works, you can find it on Bookshop.org and at Amazon.

And now, the links:

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→ May 23, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/23/21.

I had one post this past week for subscribers to the Athletic, breaking down the four-player trade between Milwaukee and Tampa Bay along with the implications for Wander Franco, Taylor Walls, and Luis Urías. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Cryo, a really engaging new worker-placement game from the designers of Manhattan Project: Energy Empire, where resources are always limited and you have to build your board to maximize your resource collection.

If you’d like to buy The Inside Game and support my board game habit, Midtown Scholar has a few signed copies still available. You can also buy it from any of the indie stores in this twitter thread, all of whom at least had the book in stock earlier this month. If none of those works, you can find it on Bookshop.org and at Amazon.

And now, the links…

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→ May 16, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/16/21.

I’ve had three posts up in the last week for subscribers to the Athletic: my ranking of the top 100 prospects for this year’s MLB Draft; a special Q&A about that ranking; and a post on my trip to see Vanderbilt and Alabama, when Jack Leiter was a very late scratch for his start. He did pitch yesterday and his velocity was completely normal.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Flourish, a new, quick-playing card game from the designers of Everdell.

If you’d like to buy The Inside Game and support my board game habit, Midtown Scholar has a few signed copies still available. You can also buy it from any of the indie stores in this twitter thread, all of whom at least had the book in stock earlier this month. If none of those works, you can find it on Bookshop.org and at Amazon.

For more of me, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter, which will return this week (tomorrow, I hope).

And now, the links…

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→ May 1, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 5/1/21.

I had two posts for subscribers to The Athletic this week, one on how the Rockies’ next GM might start to turn the franchise around, and a draft scouting notebook looking at several day-one candidates, led by Fordham lefty Matt Mikulski.

On the Keith Law Show this week, my guest was MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis, talking about this year’s MLB draft class. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Amazon, and Spotify. I also appeared on the Athletic Baseball Show on Friday, which will be my regular slot for most of the year.

If you’d like to buy The Inside Game and support my board game habit, Midtown Scholar has a few signed copies still available. You can also buy it from any of the indie stores in this twitter thread, all of whom at least had the book in stock earlier this month. If none of those works, you can find it on Bookshop.org and at Amazon.

For more of me, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

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