Make baseball a five-year-old you throw the wiffleball to, over and over in the summer sunshine, watching her miss each time. Then hiss crowd noise into the air when she finally puts her plastic bat on the ball and runs laughing around no bases.
Alyssa Nakken is the first female coach in MLB history; Félix Hernández is not a Mariner and that’s weird; the 2020 Chicago Cubs if they were Pearl Jam songs
Keep a ballplayer, fill in with muppets; ‘Cats’ reminds us of the good old days of feeling joy in hating things
Love: Luis Arraez Style; the story of a baseball field in Arrey, New Mexico; Good Omens; female scouts remain not welcomed by some; so are we really never going to talk about why the Cubs are playing close to Thanksgiving in ‘The Martian’?; calling someone else’s shot
Tyler Skaggs, grief, and magical thinking; when opioid overdoses make you think of home; Trevor Rosenthal will (and did) record an out again; Willians Astudillo is in the zone; keeping up with all of the Jeff Joneses; the 2030 Front Office All-Star Game
Which contemporary pitcher best exemplifies the phrase “life throws you a curveball” when your mother says she’s marrying your uncle?; a review of Ty Kelly’s poem about David Wright; crowd sourcing a take on the three-batter reliever minimum when your writing arm is tired
When everything else is seemingly falling apart in our lives, baseball is there; the beauty of BaseBallet, from Mike Krukow’s son; the Cubs might trade Kris Bryant and come on that’s silly
The flaw in judging those who don’t know everything that came before (the Billie Eilishs of MLB); the sadness in Ichiro torching teachers; the audacity of Joey Gallo flaunting his new threads.
How Ryan Costello lived; three texts that begin with ‘I’ for three friends I recently visited; policing the new/old Padres, Brewers, Diamondbacks uniforms
Gabe Kapler and Farhan Zaidi refuse to learn; the Astros lead one writer to make a shocking confession; a baseball advent calendar; getting Gerrit “Salieri” Cole to step up his game