Stick to baseball, 8/31/24.

I’m back to work this week, having gone to Delmarva on Wednesday night to catch Boston’s latest teenaged phenom, Franklin Arias, and will have a long scouting notebook up in a day or two covering that and three other games I haven’t written up yet. I’m a little at odds and ends for next week, as it looks like the schedules of the local teams are pretty unfavorable, and I may have to wait and see on the playoffs.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the board game Rock Hard 1977, designed by Jackie Fuchs, a four-time Jeopardy! champion who happened to be the bassist for the influential rock band the Runaways under the name Jackie Fox. It’s fantastic, and spurred me to rank my five favorite thematic board games (meaning games where the theme is great and well-integrated with game play).

I’ve been holding off on a newsletter until that review went up, so I’ll try to get one out this weekend. You can sign up for free in eager anticipation.

And now, the links…

  • “The truth is that Staten Island kind of sucks.” I’d argue that’s half-right; Staten Island just sucks. It’s the worst of the five boroughs, lacking the culture or diversity of the other four – and it doesn’t have the subway. New York should just hand it to New Jersey. The two states should build a bridge from Jersey City straight to Brooklyn. But this Baffler longread argues that it sucks because it’s Trumpy and xenophobic, and that there are other “little Staten Islands” around the rest of the city, too. And now they’re talking about seceding from the rest of the city on which they depend for their financial existence.
  • The City of Philadelphia released a farcical economic “study” that purports to show that building a new sports arena in Chinatown will benefit the city even though the 76ers already play in a perfectly usable facility that doesn’t require destroying a historic neighborhood and displacing residents.
  • Once upon a time, Chipotle was the “good” fast-food outlet, trying to use better quality ingredients and cultivate relationships with farmers, but ultimately, the profit motive has won out – they’ve been accused of denying raises to unionized workers at a Michigan location in violation of federal law.
  • Lionsgate put out a trailer for the new Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis that included a bunch of fake quotes from movie critics blasting some of the director’s older and more acclaimed movies. Megalopolis looks like it’s going to be a giant disaster, after mostly bad reviews at Cannes and multiple stumbles already from the studio and the director.
  • Ohio Republicans, who have repeatedly shown themselves to be some of the worst enemies of democracy, have approved language for an anti-gerrymandering ballot question that is designed to confuse voters into voting their way. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who voted seven times to use district maps that were ruled unconstitutional by courts, drafted the confusing language.
  • A cop in Massachusetts raped a girl he met through the state’s program for kids interested in law enforcement careers and then murdered her when she became pregnant, according to charges filed last week. The article I linked refers to “sex acts” before the victim, Sandra Birchmore, was 16 years old, but doesn’t use the correct word for it: rape. This is statutory rape and we need to stop normalizing it by avoiding the term.
  • Mainstream news outlets complaining about the DNC’s credentialing of over 200 content creators are authoring their own extinction, according to Mark Jacob, whose newsletter covers the way right-wing propagandists have run rings around the MSM. Jacob argues that journalists need to refocus on real journalism, like investigative pieces, now that the subjects can often go around them to talk directly to their audiences/customers.
  • A conservative alumni group at the University of Virginia has pressured the school into suspending campus tours given by a student-run service because they talked about how Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and raped them. Really.
  • The denialist group Biosafety Now, which continues to push the debunked lab-leak theory and includes a wide number of prominent anti-vaxxers, has added economist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, whose advice to then-President Trump on the pandemic was disastrous, to its board. This same group has worked closely with Republicans in Congress to push false claims that China is responsible for creating SARS-CoV-2 and should be held responsible for damages.

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, 4/13/24.

I’ve got some new content coming up this week, with a new draft ranking due to run on Thursday and a draft scouting blog probably running Monday or Tuesday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the collectible card game Star Wars: Unlimited – Spark of Rebellion, which I enjoyed even though I’m not generally a fan of deckbuilders.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter, detailing a rather ridiculous dinner I had at the bar at The Publican, an acclaimed Chicago restaurant where, to say the least, one does not belch as loudly as one can.

I’m going to be on a new TV show, Diamond Dreams starting on Monday, April 15th, on the streaming channel Stadium. The show is a half-hour look at prospects around the minors and for the draft, and will be followed by a show on collectibles where I’ll also offer some comments on the prospects they’re discussing. You can watch via the app on pretty much any platform.

And now, the links…

  • There’s a big scam going around that has tricked a number of content creators into ceding control of their Facebook pages. It starts with what seems to be an invitation to appear on a big podcast, which of course is very appealing to most people trying to build their online audience.
  • Former SCOTUS justice Steven Breyer wants everyone to get along, like his former colleagues on the high court, even though some of those colleagues are busy destroying Americans’ basic civil rights, writes Elie Mystal of The Nation.
  • The Atlantic’s David Graham describes the “Trump two-step:” say something outrageous, claim that’s not really what he said or meant, and then quietly embrace the original statement.
  • Mehdi Hasan wrote in the Guardian that Justice Sonja Sotomayor needs to retire from the Supreme Court so President Biden can appoint a replacement, avoiding the possibility that Trump would get to appoint a fourth justice and give the court a 7-2 majority that would likely last decades. I’m not sure if I agree, but he at least offers a solid argument.
  • Here’s a great summary and index of economic research showing how consistently these sports stadium deals fail to live up to economic promises. If you’re writing about the topic, or know a journalist who is, this is invaluable, because the pro-stadium forces will always trot out fabricated numbers from consultants who give them what they want.
  • A senior editor at NPR wrote a bad-faith, error-filled critique of the public radio outlet on Bari Weiss’s blog. NPR responded, defending its hiring practices and its philosophy. You can find many takedowns of Uri Berliner’s original piece, but one fact that got me was that he accused NPR of downplaying or ignoring the lab-leak theory behind COVID-19’s origins, even when the evidence in favor of a zoonotic spillover kept mounting.
  • WFLA has the story of a young boy with autism who can no longer receive health services because Florida kicked him off Medicaid. We need more stories like this, showing everyday people getting badly hurt by state policies that cut funding for essential services like health care, education, and even school lunches for underprivileged people.
  • Chicago police killed Dexter Reed during a traffic stop where he fired first, injuring one officer, after which the cops fired 96 rounds in less than a minute. The Sun-Times reports that the five officers involved in the incident have been investigated a total of 41 times since 2019, and that the area where they stopped Reed has a disproportionate number of traffic stops. The cops have said they pulled Reed over because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
  • Delaware State Senator Sarah McBride is running to be our at-large Representative, vying to become the first trans person elected to Congress. She’s one of at least three Democrats hoping to win the primary, which is tantamount to winning the election in our very blue state. Full disclosure: I’ve met Sen. McBride and we often see each other at our local Brew Haha coffee shop.
  • Is social media really driving a surge in mental illness among teenagers, as Jonathan Haidt claims in his new book? The evidence is mixed at best, according to this review in Nature.
  • Eric Hovde, who is running for Senate in Wisconsin as a Republican, is now facing backlash over his comments from a previous campaign where he called for cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, attacked single mothers, said alcohol should never have been legalized, questioned whether farmers work hard, and lots of other great stuff.

Stick to baseball, 8/19/23.

I’ve got a piece filed to run on Monday or Tuesday at The Athletic, and another review coming up this week at Paste, but had nothing new up this week. My podcast will be back this week with an episode I recorded on Friday. So … sorry? But I’ll have a lot of content up in the next few days.

A few weeks ago, I appeared on the video podcast Shelf Stories to discuss ethics in board game media and questions of integrity and professionalism among folks who review games or otherwise cover the space, along with former Kotaku writer Luke Plunkett. It’s a long discussion but I greatly enjoyed it.

And now, the links…

  • The Times also had a piece about three weeks ago looking into the continuing mystery over the origins of COVID-19, arguing that the public’s greater belief in the lab-leak conspiracy theory – any hypothesis of a lab leak remains stubbornly unsupported by evidence – is a function of distrust of authorities and the competition between narratives, not a question of facts.
  • A Montana judge ruled in favor of young climate-change activists who sued the state, arguing that Montana’s policy preventing state agencies from considering greenhouse gas emission potential when evaluating permits for fossil fuel development is unconstitutional. It’s largely symbolic, but could present a path for similar suits elsewhere.
  • A new state tax in Massachusetts that levies an extra 4% on incomes over a million dollars will raise $1 billion for FY2024, and the proceeds will pay for free school lunches for all kids in the state, among other things (I assume). Unfortunately, this article’s author confuses wealth with income, referring to “the state’s wealthiest residents.” Income and wealth are not the same thing, and taxing each is a very different process.
  • From last month, Katherine Miller wrote in the New York Times about the farcical No Labels party, which won’t reveal its funding sources and seems more interested in re-electing Donald Trump than pushing an actual new “centrist” platform (as if Democrats weren’t closer to the center than the progressive left anyway).

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, 11/20/21.

I had two new posts for subscribers to The Athletic this week, one on the Noah Syndergaard signing and one on the Eduardo Rodriguez signing.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Genotype, the latest boardgame from Genius Games, a company that creates games that incorporate real math/science concepts into its titles so they’re educational as well as fun. I think this is their best effort yet.

No podcasts this week, but my show will return next week. I did send out a new edition of my free email newsletter earlier this week. 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…

  • Longreads first: New York has the inside story of reporter Felicia Sonmez’s lawsuit against her employer, the Washington Post, with some damning details about the now-retired executive editor Marty Baron, one of the heroes of Spotlight.
  • North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) pardoned Dontae Sharpe, who was wrongfully convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and served 26 years for it, even though a key witness recanted her testimony just months after his trial.
  • Coffee, and specialty coffee in particular, is a Yemeni product, but the Yemeni people have not benefited from its explosion into a high-end product consumed around the world. Some Yemeni entrepreneurs in Brooklyn are trying to change that, with coffee shops that use Yemen-grown coffee – no mean feat given the chaos and devastation of seven years of civil war there.
  • A Latino police officer in Joliet, Illinois, leaked official video that showed a colleague choking and slapping a suspect who was dying of a drug overdose. The police union’s response was to kick him out, and the DA has filed criminal charges against him.
  • Meanwhile, Ohio Republicans in the state House have passed a ban on vaccine mandates. I thought Republicans opposed excessive government interference? I must be thinking of some other brand of Republicans.

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.

Stick to baseball, 11/10/18.

I didn’t have any new ESPN+ posts this week, with my free agent rankings going up on November 2nd and my trade market overview due to run this upcoming Monday. I did hold a Klawchat on Thursday, and did a Periscope video chat on Wednesday (and even played a little something on guitar).

My latest board game review for Paste covers the cute, competitive, asymmetric game Root, where cuddly forest creatures fight battles for control of the forest, and each player has unique pieces, abilities, and paths to victory. It’s quite clever.

Feel free to sign up for that free email newsletter I keep talking about and occasionally remember to send out.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Undark exposes the conservative groups fighting climate chance education in Florida classrooms, as well as how they wage this war and their efforts to bring it to other states. The irony of failing to teach the reality of anthropogenic climate change in a state that might be the most adversely affected by it should not be lost on you.
  • Working conditions in the Tesla factory would make Upton Sinclair blush; medical staff are “forbidden from calling 911 without permission,” and five former clinic employees told The Center for Investigative Reporting’s writers that the on-site clinic’s practices are “unsafe and unethical.” One source was fired in August by the clinic, which she says is because she raised concerns about the clinic’s treatment of workers. Tesla’s pricing starts around $35,000 for its model 3 sedan to over $140,000 for its Model X P100D SUV.
  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was still working in a Manhattan Taqueria when she began her campaign for Congress, and Bon Appetit spoke to her there about the intersection between food and politics. She points out that food is intertwined with climate change, minimum wage laws, immigration, health care, education, and more (I’d add trade policy/protectionism, other environmental regulations, and water rights to the list.)
  • Anti-vaccine PACs helped shape this week’s midterm ballots, as those groups fought to defeat Republicans who weren’t sufficiently anti-vax during primary races. Dr. Paul Offit, who helped develop the rotavirus vaccine, wrote about how he’d like to answer anti-vax loons who still argue that vaccines cause autism.
  • Ninety-eight year old Roger Angell penned this wonderfully angry essay on the power of voting for the New Yorker, which ran it the day before Election Day.
  • The deputy editorial page editor for the Washington Post writes that new acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker is a crackpot.
  • Wisconsin Republicans are trying to strip the incoming Democratic governor of much of the office’s power right now, which is particularly sad given the mess the outgoing Scott Walker leaves in the state’s education budget. Most notable is that he gave Taiwanese company Foxconn up to $4 billion in subsidies and tax breaks, a deal that would have resulted in the state paying about $230,000 per job created … if it had even created the number of jobs promised, which it hasn’t. That money would have filled the education budget gap and then some.
  • If Brian Kemp wins the gubernatorial race in Georgia, his victory would need an asterisk, according to Prof. Carol Anderson, who has written a book on voter suppression called One Person, No Vote. I said in my Periscope chat this week that when leaders in less-developed countries steal elections, the citizens take to the streets in peaceful protests and workers strike. I never thought we’d need that here, but that may be the only response Georgians have here.
  • The Kansas City Star exposes the overconfidence and disorganization that sank Kris Kobach’s campaign and gave Kansas its first Democratic win for a statewide office in 12 years.
  • The Houston Chronicle has had to retract eight stories written by Austin bureau chief Mike Ward after discovering that he’d fabricated dozens of people he quoted in those articles.
  • Adam Serwer writes in the Atlantic that America’s problem is not tribalism, but base racism, given how one of our two major parties seems to rely on race-baiting and trafficking in stereotypes to rally its base. And it works.
  • Trump mouthed off last week about making the Federal Reserve less independent; Venezuela’s experience demonstrates why that’s a foolish notion. Of course, Trump also blamed the three eastern Baltic nations for starting the war in Yugoslavia, so I don’t think we’re dealing with the brightest bulb in the chandelier here.
  • A giant supernova named Cow appeared without warning in June and has given scientists a rare look at the birth of either a black hole or a neutron star.
  • Oakland chef Charlie Hallowell, whose restaurant Pizzaiolo I visited and really enjoyed, is trying to come back to his old life after more than a dozen women came forward to say he sexually harassed them. He’s facing some backlash, but also getting frankly unwarranted support from other men in the business who seem to gloss over his behavior. The landlord for his newest restaurant, Western Pacific in Berkeley, is Lakireddy Bali Reddy, who pled guilty to human trafficking, bringing underage girls from India to the United States so he could have sex with them.
  • A mob of protesters gathered outside Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s house and threatened his safety. Reason argues it’s not just wrong, but actively harmful to the cause. I have zero sympathy for Carlson, who has chosen this life of fomenting bigotry for profit, but I agree with the column. Don’t threaten him or his family. You want to make him stop? Go after his advertisers. Cut your cable subscription. Ask public places you frequent to stop showing Fox News. But threatening journalist won’t help … although one protester says the reports of threats are highly embellished.
  • Dr. Christine Blasey Ford continues to face death threats, moving four times this year, while the man who assaulted her gets to sit on the Supreme Court and decide how the rest of us can live our lives.
  • A fake doctor in California who promises a “miracle cure” for cancer using baking soda was sued by a patient and hit with a $105 million judgment. The money seems tangential – the point here is that these charlatans prey on the desperate, and the law seems too slow or simply unequipped to stop them.
  • Dr. Devah Pager died earlier this month of pancreatic cancer at age 46. Her work helped demonstrate that being black in the job market was, in effect, as big of a negative as having a felony conviction was
  • Comedian Patrick Monahan (no, not the Train guy) wrote about Louise Mensch’s legendary tweet about Steve Bannon possibly getting the death penalty for New York magazine’s The Cut. I take no pleasure in reposting this.
  • New York beverage director, author, and bitters expert Sother Teague writes about how he uses his role to espouse important causes, as with his NYC bar Coup, where proceeds go to groups fighting the worst policies of this administration. I appreciated this quote in particular: “Diminishing language such as ‘stick to sports’ holds no place and only serves to display the ignorance of those who say it.”
  • In the last two years, two mental health professionals in Monterey County have taken their own lives, including David Soskin, who drove off Highway 1 at Hurricane Point in June. Less than two years previously, a colleague with whom Soskin had clashed, Robert Jackson, took his own life, having left his job with the county after accusing Soskin of creating a hostile work environment.
  • This (unrolled) Twitter thread shows the bonkers elections in Alaska from Tuesday, with ties going back 40-plus years. Don Young won re-election yet again; he’s been Alaska’s at-large Representative since 1972, before I was born, after losing the election but taking the seat because his opponent died before election day. Young is still just the fourth Representative in the state’s history, even though he refuses to hold town halls and holds many views best left in the 19th century.
  • My employer did a nice thing for longtime employees, shutting down the Magic Kingdom for a night to allow Disney cast members of 40-plus years of service to enjoy the park for themselves.
  • Finally, this magic trick won for the best close-up trick at the International Federation of Magic Societies’ 2018 World Championship of Magic, and it’s dazzling:

Stick to baseball, 10/27/18.

My most recent piece for ESPN+ subscribers wrapped up my Arizona Fall League stint, looking at 25 players from 13 organizations. I also had a free piece on ESPN with food, coffee, beer, and travel tips for Boston and Los Angeles leading into the World Series. I held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My latest board game review for Paste looks at Nyctophobia, a one-versus-many game where most players play with blackout glasses. Only the villain can see the board; everyone else must play by touch and by talking to their teammates.

If, like Dave Gahan, you just can’t get enough, you can sign up for my free email newsletter, with more of my writing, appearing whenever the muse moves me.

And now, the links…

Stick to baseball, 5/5/18.

My first mock draft for 2018 is now up for Insiders, as is a short post on the Ronald Acuña show. I also held a Klawchat on Friday.

I did some podcasts with friends this week. I appeared on the Productive Outs podcast to talk some baseball and music. Then I talked with Seth Heasley on his Hugos There podcast to discuss To Say Nothing of the Dog, one of my all-time favorite comic novels (and a Hugo Award winner). And of course on Thursday I was on the BBTN podcast with Buster Olney.

By the way, if any of you happen to live in/near Stockholm, there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to be there for a conference in the near future. Let me know in the comments what I should try to do or see in the few hours I’ll have free while there.

And now, the links…