Stick to baseball, 4/20/24.

I updated my ranking of the top prospects for this year’s draft, going to 50 names but not without some difficulty; and posted a scouting notebook covering a half-dozen prospects in the class I saw over the previous ten days. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

As I mentioned in my chat the other day, the Athletic spiked my podcast and cut the daily baseball show to three a week, so I’m no longer doing any regular podcasts for them. I did make a guest appearance on the Windup on Friday, talking draft and prospect stuff.

I am now appearing weekly on the Stadium streaming channel, on the 2 pm show Diamond Dreams, which is entirely about prospects, with occasional appearances on their roundup show The Rally. You can get the app here. Right now, it doesn’t appear that shows are archived, but I’m looking into it.

Once this is done, I’m hoping to get another edition of my free email newsletter out this weekend, before I head back to Chicago for the next show.

Taylor Swift is on Threads now – but I was there first. I’m on Bluesky, too. I ended up re-verified on Twitter, which makes me eligible for a cut of ad revenues around my tweets; I’m going to donate all of it to the Trevor Project. My first and only payout so far was $16.64, which I’ve already donated.

And now, pop an edible (if it’s legal where you are) and enjoy the links…

Stick to baseball, 3/23/24.

At the Athletic, I wrote about a bunch of prospects I saw in the Cactus League, including two Breakout games; plus a list of six breakout candidates for 2024; as well as a Q&A with our fantasy expert Nando di Fino.

At Vulture, I wrote about the surge in cooperative tabletop games that started with Pandemic and then picked up during the … pandemic, really, along with a list of 14 of the best.

Now that this post is up I’ll begin the next edition of my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 3/16/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I wrote up the players I saw in the Reds-Rangers Breakout Game plus a few other notes from Arizona, broke down the Dylan Cease trade, and posted a ranking of the top 20 prospects for likely impact in 2024, and offered a draft scouting notebook from the Wake Forest-Duke series. I’ll have some more Breakout game reports after the weekend, but unfortunately the two games I hoped to hit on Friday were both washed out by rain.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter earlier this week. 

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Judd Blevins is a white nationalist. The town of Enid, Oklahoma, voted him on to their city council, but there’s a fight brewing now to remove him. Blevins refuses to address his history with Identity Evropa, a major white nationalist organization, instead hiding behind “God” and religion.
  • Oregon moved to recriminalize possession of hard drugs, notably fentanyl and heroin, three years after decriminalizing it. Note that several quotes here are from Republican representatives talking about fentanyl (a popular GOP talking point) and Portland (which they do not represent).
  • This year’s FAFSA roll-out and the new rules that led to the changes in the federal student-aid forms have all been a huge disaster that may force some schools to delay enrollment deadlines.
  • Allowing kids to get the measles, the mumps, or rubella just to satisfy some lunatic’s political goals is needlessly cruel, but the cruelty is the point, isn’t it?
  • Medici is one of Reiner Knizia’s most acclaimed games, part of his so-called Auction Trilogy with Ra and Modern Art, but it’s been out of print for several years now. Steamforged announced they’re taking pre-orders for a new edition coming out this year.

Stick to baseball, 10/14/23.

My one piece this week for subscribers to the Athletic this week was my first dispatch from the Arizona Fall League, covering prospects from the Tigers, Cardinals, and Rockies. I’ll have a longer wrap-up once my trip concludes on Saturday evening.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: ProPublica continues to lead the way in exposing the role of Leonard Leo in creating the conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court and packing federal courts with right-wing jurists, often of dubious credentials, and how he plans to push the country further towards a Christian theocracy.
  • New York’s Olivia Nuzzi followed the clown car of Republican candidates trying to run against the disgraced former President – and, so far, failing.
  • The richest man in Pennsylvania is spending millions of dollars to support Republican candidates for judicial races, most of it to support Carolyn Carluccio, a right-wing justice running for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court.
  • Sports Illustrated’s Steve Rushin wrote a lovely memoriam to sportswriter Jim Caple, who died last week at age 61 of frontotemporal dementia. I did not know Jim well, and even argued with him at times about matters such as the value of the runs scored statistic for individual hitters, but I believe the outpouring of sadness from people in our industry who did know him well is a testament to his legacy.
  • Several new instant-loan apps in India have targeted borrowers with threats of leaked nudes, harassment, and other forms of coercion that have led to multiple suicides.
  • I have taken a psyllium husk supplement every day for nearly 25 years now to help manage my stomach, as I was diagnosed with the meaningless term “irritable bowel syndrome,” which means that I don’t actually have a GI disease or disorder but the doctors didn’t want me to walk away empty-handed. Psyllium husk works wonders, and it’s probably pretty good for my overall health anyway. Now it’s a fad food and if you fucking hippies and influencers create a shortage I will come for you all.
  • Target closed several Seattle stores, blaming crime for the decisions – but is that really the reason for the failures of these Target mini-stores?
  • Arkansas, befitting its status as a backwater state, gave prisoners with COVID-19 ivermectin without their knowledge or consent, so now the ACLU has filed suit on their behalf. Just a reminder that ivermectin is completely ineffective against COVID-19 and comes with rather unpleasant side effects, no matter what the grifters on the interwebs told you.
  • Mississippi was one of the only two states that disallowed religious exemptions to childhood vaccination requirements until a Republican judge struck down the state’s rule, and this fall over 1800 such exemptions have been issued – even though no major religion bans or forbids vaccines. This is all a con from parents who are ignorant, denialist, or just sheep going along with the Republican party’s anti-science platform. We’re likely to see some sort of outbreak there in the next few months, perhaps measles, as it’s the most contagious of the vaccine-preventable diseases that affect humans.
  • Eric Trump hosted an overt anti-Semite who denies the Holocaust and once killed someone while driving drunk at the Trump Doral Miami resort for a “Reawaken America” event this week.
  • And some prominent Texas Republicans hosted Holocaust denier and white supremacist Nick Fuentes at the headquarters of right-wing consulting firm Pale Horse Strategies.
  • Elon Musk is actively promoting false information about the Israel-Hamas war, even sharing a video that falsely claimed a reporter there was actually an actor. (By the way, I’m avoiding any commentary on that conflict. I know I don’t know anywhere near enough to say anything worthwhile beyond condemning any and all attacks on civilians.)
  • Alex Norris is the creator of the web comic known simply as Webcomic Name, but after he signed a deal with Golden Bell Games to publish a board game using his creations, the publisher is trying to claim ownership of his intellectual property. There’s a GoFundMe to support his legal case, but I’m also linking this so people know what Golden Bell – publishers of Unbroken, Dungeon Dice, and other titles – are all about.

Stick to baseball, 1/14/23.

My latest piece for subscribers to the Athletic went up last Saturday, a breakdown of the Phillies’ trade for Gregory Soto, a deal I quite like for Detroit. My podcast will return this upcoming week, and the top 100 prospects ranking is scheduled to run on January 30th.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the roll-and-write game Riverside, which just missed my top ten games of 2022 list (it was the final cut).

I’ve sent out two editions of my free email newsletter in two weeks (!), so you should definitely sign up now.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: The Financial Times has a fascinating story on four women who work as spies in Britain’s SIS, looking at their actual jobs and lives (as much as possible) and the agency’s history of discrimination, often to its own detriment.
  • The Philly Inquirer looks at the successes and struggles of Mastbaum High School, a vocational/technical school in Kensington, a neighborhood often called ground zero of the city’s opioid epidemic. One unavoidable conclusion: the school is wildly underfunded given its role in the community.
  • You may have seen a claim about more athletes dying from cardiac arrest since the COVID-19 vaccines were introduced than died from the same in the preceding twenty or so years. It’s bullshit, and comes from a source-less site called goodsciencing that is probably backed by the CEO of conservative site NewsBlaze.
  • A fake tweet claiming a Florida doctor had made absurd pro-vaccine statements was amplified by a host of alt-right accounts, and Twitter refused to take it down, leading to a wave of harassment against her. VICE also covered the story, focusing on Joe Rogan amplifying the tweet.
  • Yet another fake AirBnB listing scam, this time in Philly, with renters showing up to find that the house was listed without the owners’ knowledge.
  • Right-wingers have been organizing for several years to take over school boards so they could push their theological, homophobic, transphobic, and even white supremacist agendas into public schools. The Philly Inquirer has a story about some progressives who are belatedly fighting back.
  • Smithtown, New York, the retrograde part of Long Island where I was born, decided to remove all Pride displays from its libraries back in June. This isn’t shocking if you’ve been there, as it’s as provincial a suburb as you’ll find. People there don’t get off the Island enough to realize there’s a whole big world out there.

Stick to baseball, 11/5/22.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I ranked the top 50 free agents in this year’s class, and held a Q&A about it that afternoon. Based on my Twitter replies, a lot of people looked at the raw rankings without reading any of the content. Good times!

My guest on the Keith Law Show this week was Caroline Criado Perez, author of the book Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Menand host of the podcast Visible Women. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Last week’s roundup went up late because of all the sportsball going on over the weekend, so I’m relinking it here for folks who missed it.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 10/22/22.

My second and much longer notebook on guys I saw in the Arizona Fall League went up this week for subscribers to the Athletic. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My guest on The Keith Law Show this week was Craig Calcaterra, writer of the excellent Cup of Coffee newsletter and author of the book Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can sign up for my free email newsletter and maybe I’ll send another edition out this week. Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore. I hear they make great holiday gifts.

My friend and former colleague at ESPN Sarah Langs announced a few weeks ago on Twitter that she has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mandy Bell of MLB.com set up a GoFundMe for Sarah, if you’d like to join me in contributing.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 9/11/22.

I pushed this post back a day so I could file another post for the Athletic, so you had two from me in the last 48 hours – a scouting post on some top Guardians and Nationals prospects, and a second edition of my looks at September prospect callups. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Next Station: London, a great new flip-and-write game with a route-planning mechanic that makes it a sort of a puzzle – the choices you make early in the game constrain your choices later. This is definitely the year of the roll/flip-and-write.

My guest on this week’s episode of the Keith Law Show was Wingspan game designer Elizabeth Hargrave, talking about her next big game, The Fox Experiment, now on Kickstarter (and already 500% funded in five days). You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: The New Yorker looks at how Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and the Ottawa County police department have worked together to turn rape victims into defendants, putting one of their own on trial for accusing a cop – who has been accused by at least two other women of sexual assault – of coercing her into sex.

A column denying the extent of racism in Canadian society led to a successful effort to unionize the country’s conservative paper the National Post, securing gains for BIPOC employees in the process.

A Fox producer warned execs to stop Jeanine Pirro from airing her election-denial views, according to documents revealed in the Dominion Systems lawsuit against the right-wing juggernaut.

Billionaire Barre Seid has used his money to fund climate-change denialism and fight Medicaid expansion (that is, health care for our poorest citizens), while also funding a law school to churn out archconservative future judges, according to records unearthed by ProPublica.

One Alabama prison has been holding pregnant women there for weeks or months, in what appears to be a violation of basic Constitutional rights, to protect the fetuses from drug use.

David DeWitt of the Ohio Capitol Journal writes of the intolerable cruelty of Ohio’s total ban on abortions, including the suffering already of pregnant women needing essential medical care.

Nature’s editors write of the need for greater protections for scientists and researchers from threats and abuse, pointing at lawmakers and the executives running social media sites.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, introduced a new “Commitment to America” that is short on ideas and long on Trumpian insanity, according to Alex Shephard of the New Republic, pointing to the lack of details for how it will achieve vague goals, emphasis on truly counterproductive policies (like increasing fossil fuel production), and kowtowing to election deniers.

Oxford scientists may have developed an effective malaria vaccine. Malaria has long resisted traditional approaches to vaccine development because it’s caused by a parasite, rather than a bacterium or virus, and the parasite changes form once inside the host’s body.

Count me among those Duolingo users who hate the app’s total redesign, as it has removed most of the flexibility the old structure gave users to set their own pace; I used the app to try to keep my Spanish skills fresh, but wouldn’t do those lessons at the same speed or rate as those of Welsh, which I was learning from scratch. The founder’s comments don’t give me much hope, as they betrayed a real disdain for their customers.

I knew Florida state Rep. Randy Fine in college, and am not surprised to see the person he’s become as an adult or politician – he was one of the most vocal Florida officials to rail against “woke” Disney, but is also happy to spend thousands of dollars on the company’s cruises and products.

An 18-year-old student was elected to the Boise School Board, in no small part because his opponent refused to denounce an endorsement from a far-right extremist group that arrives armed with AR-15s to public events, supports book banning, and refers to undocumented immigrants as “illegals.”

As many GOP candidates across the country are trying to scrub anti-abortion or other hard-right rhetoric from their campaign sites, Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano is leaning harder in that direction, becoming “Trumpier than Trump” in the words of Axios’ Jonathan Swan.

Lots of board game Kickstarters etc. this week, starting with the solo-only game Legacy of Yu from Shem Phillips, designer of Raiders of the North Sea and the North Sea and West Kingdom series of games.

Disney is introducing a new Magic: the Gathering-style collectible card game called Lorcana, and Polygon has images of some of the superb art.

Keith Matejka, designer of the Roll Player games, has a new title on Kickstarter called Dawn of Ulos, a tile-laying game for 1-5 players set in the Roll Player universe.

25th Century Games has a Gamefound campaign up for expansions to its Prehistories and Space Explorers games.

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:

Stick to baseball, 3/15/21.

I have one new post up for subscribers to the Athletic, looking at prospects I can’t wait to see when minor league games resume. I also held a Klawchat last week.

On the Keith Law Show last week, I spoke with Cleveland right-hander Triston McKenzie about his development as a pitcher and his experiences as a Black ballplayer. On this week’s episode, I spoke with film critic Tim Grierson about his new book This is How You Make a Movie, the Oscar nominations, and his Cardinal fandom. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Amazon, and Spotify.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the new game Holi: Festival of Colors, played on a 3-D board that’s immediately striking and that lends itself to some novel strategies, with almost no random elements at all.

For more of my writing, you can subscribe to my free email newsletter. Also, you can still buy The Inside Game and Smart Baseball anywhere you buy books; the paperback edition of The Inside Game will be out in April.

And now, the links…