The Texas Rangers' new ballpark is a poseur

July 26, 2020


The newest Major League Baseball ballpark is Globe Life Field, in Arlington, Texas, home of the Texas Rangers. Though a good deal of attention has been devoted to how ugly the exterior is, the interior is where the action is, and there have been a few thoughtful pieces on how the new building will play and what the fan experience might be.

But I’m focused on one element of the stadium that afflicts almost every ballpark built after Oriole Park at Camden Yards: unnecessarily asymmetrical field dimensions.

READ MORE >>

College football leaders keep wishing the virus away. College football is doomed

July 19, 2020


This past week, AL.com published a fascinating story about how college athletics leaders have been positioning conferences and schools to maximize the chances of a football season getting underway this fall. The thrust of the story is that conference commissioners, athletic directors, coaches, and others initially took optimistic public stances even if, privately, they were pessimistic it would be safe to play at the end of August.

This strategy played out about as well as you would expect for the same reasons Donald Trump’s strategies—or total dismissal of federal strategy in favor of pushing responsibility to states and NGOs, if you prefer—have utterly failed.

READ MORE >>

Adrian Wojnarowski gave an appropriate response to a troll

July 12, 2020


When Adrian Wojnarowski received a press release from Missouri Senator Josh Hawley calling for the league to put conservative messages on player uniforms, he emailed back with two words: “Fuck you.” Now, the ESPN NBA reporter has been suspended.

You can go online and read a thousand takes on what happened, but I find it particularly exhausting because the initial exchange and subsequent burst of coverage only contained two honest words.

READ MORE >>

If your team changes its racist name, you'll be fine

July 5, 2020


With the NFL franchise in Washington and the MLB franchise in Cleveland reportedly moving toward name changes, it’s worth remembering just how long efforts to change the team names have been going on and why they haven't changed yet. Recognition that the names are racist is not new; what’s new is major sponsors have less tolerance for racist team names, mascots, and imagery given today’s cultural upheaval and that’s finally pushing team owners to (grudgingly?) change.
READ MORE >>