→ September 4, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 9/4/21.

My newest column for the Athletic was pushed back to Monday, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, I did hold my first Klawchat in a while on Friday.

On the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke with Dr. Sian Beilock, author of Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, an intangible that is actually both tangible and mutable. You can train your brain to do better in high-pressure situations. You can subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and Spotify. I also appeared on the Athletic Baseball Daily show again on Friday.

We’ve cleared over $800 raised to help Afghan refugees resettle in this area, money I will donate to Jewish Family Services of Delaware when I receive it. You can buy your “I’m just here for the #umpshow” T-shirt here to support the cause.

I’ll resume the email newsletter this weekend, now that things are calmer and less COVID-y around the house. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.

And now, the links…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
→ 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.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
→ 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…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
→ 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…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
→ July 24, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball, 7/24/21.

I had two new posts this week for subscribers to The Athletic – an update of my ranking of the top 50 prospects in baseball, including recently-drafted players, and a look at which teams just drafted their new #1 prospects. I did include unsigned draftees on the former list, which is not my typical practice, but with the signing deadline so late this year (and maybe in all future years) I saw more value in this method than in pretending those players didn’t exist; if someone I ranked doesn’t sign, I’ll update the rankings with a new player.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Snakesss, the new social-deduction/trivia game from Phil Walker-Harding (designer of Cacao, Gizmos, Silver & Gold, and Imhotep). It’s quick and fun and appropriately silly, definitely the best party game I’ve tried so far in 2021.

On The Keith Law Show this week, I talked with Fangraphs draft analyst and prospect expert Eric Longenhagen about this year’s MLB draft. You can listen & subscribe on iTunes and Spotify as well.

And now, the links…

  • The New York Times explains how the quack Joseph Mercola, who has been spreading bogus anti-science information online for at least a quarter century, is now profiting by lying about COVID-19 vaccines. He should be de-platformed everywhere.
  • Anti-vaxxers love to claim that vaccine mandates violate “the Nuremberg Code.” They’re wrong, of course – but I’m sure they understand the power of invoking something related to the Nazi regime.
  • The Washington Post explains how the despotic ruler of Dubai and Prime Minister of the UAE used the Israeli spyware product Pegasus to track and abduct his own daughter after she attempted to flee the country.
  • PragerU, the right-wing extremist site that distributes conservative “educational” videos online, has been pushing its content into schools as well through direct outreach to teachers and parents.
  • An Alabama doctor wrote about patients begging for the vaccine as they’re dying of COVID-19. Where are the consequences for the politicians – like Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who was quick to sign a bill that banned so-called “vaccine passports” just two months ago – who discouraged vaccinations, or the people spreading misinformation online about the vaccines? It’s easy to mock the ignorant, but someone had to put the wrong ideas in their heads.
  • It looks like Southern Republicans in power are belatedly getting religion on vaccines, as the threat of an unvaccinated South begins to undermine any progress we’ve made against COVID-19.
  • The great Dr. Peter Hotez explains the triple-headed monster that President Biden and all pro-vaccination efforts face – disinformation groups, the money that funds them, and state actors like Russia that help spread anti-vaccine nonsense.
  • A Trump-supporting vaccine denialist in Massachusetts died of COVID-19 last week.
  • Coal miners in Alabama have been on strike for over three months, seeking better pay and improved safety conditions. Why has there been no media coverage of it?
  • This may be an unpopular take, but I do not see the point of putting the couple whose gender-reveal party sparked a deadly wildfire in prison. It’s not going to undo any damage, it’s not going to bring the firefighter who lost his life trying to stop the fire back, and I don’t think it’s going to deter future idiots from doing the same thing any more than massive fines would. It’s a twisted sort of revenge, and just means the state has to incur the cost of keeping the couple in prison (if they’re convicted and sentenced).
  • A fundamendalist Christian church in Ireland with a history of spreading anti-Semitic views (e.g., that Jews are manipulating the stock market, and that Jews started the COVID-19 pandemic) has used an Irish law to have one of their critics arrested on charges of ‘inciting hate’ against them. Yes, a hate group is using a law designed to stop hate crimes to silence one of their critics.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
→ 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.
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
→ 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).
Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
→ 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:

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
→ 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…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , ,
→ May 8, 2021
→ By

Stick to baseball , 5/8/21.

I got back out to a minor league game last week and wrote about the prospects I saw for subscribers to the Athletic, focusing on Jackson Rutledge (Nationals) and Grayson Rodriguez (Orioles). I’ll have a post up Sunday or Monday on Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter, followed by a ranking of draft prospects later in the week.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the new card game Flourish, co-designed by the person behind the outstanding 2018 game Everdell.

On the Keith Law Show this week, my guest was Louisville catcher Henry Davis, one of the top prospects in this year’s MLB Draft; I also answered a number of your questions, mostly about the draft but also one about my three-legged cat. 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…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,