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
Last week the baseball world lost a friend, and a lot of essayists lost a mentor and a model: Michael Steinberg; *James Murphy voice* baseball we love you, but you’re bringing us down; please read our screenplay about Robot Rob Manfred: Destroyer of Baseball
Create your own edible Baltimore Orioles player; looking back at the first game of the decade (of course it was Yankees-Red Sox) and laughing; field dimensions: ranked
Position player pitcher poetry; stolen Sáenz is nothing new; the pitchers most impacted by sign stealing; music in which to troll the Astros (finally)
Kurt Suzuki put in the work to succeed on the field, but not off it; the state of sports teams visiting the White House today (bad!); a good list of more productive things to do than tweet about the Nationals’ visit yesterday
The tournament was, simply, fun as hell to watch.
Sydney Bergman reviews the recent documentary on catcher, and World War II spy, Moe Berg.
“Every pitch matters; we don’t need loss to remind us. We need grace while the sea resets its shores.”
The Cincinnati Reds game was delayed by bees the other day, a swarm of them that had congregated on one of the seats. Derek Dietrich did exactly what you’re not supposed to do in that situation, pretending to spray them rather than just calling a local apiarist. If you see a bee swarm, don’t worry…
We’re more than a week into the 2019 baseball season and Trevor Rosenthal has yet to record an out, leaving him with an ERA of literal infinity. His job has an astonishingly simple description – get outs – though like most things that can be described simply, it’s of course infinitely more complex than that….
It would make sense to extend the netting completely across the ballpark, and maybe just have the ballpark covered in plexiglass with holes for the athletes to breathe. Because in the end we really treat athletes as zoo animals: creatures to observe, admire, and fervently believe that they are not us. Getting money to play…
Don’t think about the last time you attended a funeral in Pittsburgh. Don’t think about your great aunt’s funeral on one of those cold gray days the city specializes in. A city with less sunshine than Seattle; a city clouded in funereal gray. Your sister stands next to you, and your shoes sink in the…
Once in Greece, I asked for a “Wednesday” (τέταρτη) kilo of feta instead of a “quarter” (τέταρτο). The lady behind the cheese counter in a grocery store in suburban Athens looked at me for a minute, told me my Greek wasn’t very good, and then asked me to repeat what I wanted. I’ve told that…
If you’ve never seen a Hallmark Channel Original Movie, they more or less go like this: Young, single woman from a small town moves to the big city for her fast-paced creative job (ad executive seems to be a particular favorite), goes home for the holidays and in the process, meets and woos/is wooed by…