Best of BP: The Moon and the Stars (Baseball Prospectus, originally published November 2022)

When it comes to baseball, it’s this drive, this need to speed up the game and its financial growth to meet the unquenchable hunger of capitalism, that worries me far more than the efficiency quants tinkering with the margins on the field. When those same private equity firms stripping and strangling newspapers and the American housing market are allowed to buy into 15% shares of MLB franchises, the eventual downstream effects on profit margins cannot possibly benefit the fans, or the product on the field.

‘We Were Consciously Fashioning An Alternative’: How Deadspin Changed Sports Journalism (Global Sport Matters/republished by The Guardian, July 2022)

The need within sports journalism for this kind of reflexive skepticism – an ethos of questioning power and competitive success instead of celebrating it – has been highlighted by dozens of stories over the past decade, including systematic sexual abuse perpetrated by former USA Gymnastics trainer Larry Nassar, allegations of physical and sexual violence against pitcher Trevor Bauer, and dozens of sexual assault allegations against quarterback Deshaun Watson. Spin it out further, away from the sports world, and we’ve seen how following through on vetting official statements can lead to the unraveling of an entire official narrative, as in the aftermath of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting this spring.

Riding Towards A Hopeful Future (Bicycling Magazine, June 2022)

Clark’s is the kind of program that, if it works here, could be a model recreated around the country. Especially if it continues to branch upwards and outwards in the ways it has over the last couple years. Clark started a mountain bike team with 12 students last year, two competing at the varsity level, that he hopes to expand to 20 this season.

MLB’s Big, Long, Quiet China Gambit (Baseball Prospectus, February 2022)

You may have guessed, at this point, the purpose of all of this—to find baseball’s Yao Ming, the face of a country of 1.4 billion people, wearing an MLB team’s hat and uniform, providing a pathway to the largest untapped market of potential baseball fans on the planet. In today’s increasingly connected world, such an effort flying under the radar feels impossible. And yet, it mostly has.

With Sports Betting Legal Across DMV, GambetDC’s Issues Become Clearer (Washington City Paper, December 2021)

Much of the focus of the coverage of the audit was, understandably, on that low raw tax revenue number, and the just $1.8 million drawn between all operators. That’s a far cry from the more than $25 million per year in tax money projected when the bill was first proposed. But the real glaring number here is in the percentage of GambetDC revenue that made its way to city coffers.

Parallel Lines: Bikes, BBQ, & Baseball (Baseball Prospectus, August 2021)

The further from the game’s center of power, the more teams have been able to be expressive, to cut against the ideas of what baseball is and can be. As much as baseball has been “on a tape delay,” as Mintz puts it, in adapting its marketing to attract the next generation, maybe there’s something to the actual changes in the way the game is played on the fringes of the sport. … This is where, perhaps, baseball should take note of what’s happening in cycling, another sport with high barriers for entry, with certain levels of gatekeeping and a largely white, aging demographic.

Best of BP: BananaBall—Savannah’s Grand Experiment to Save Baseball from Itself (Baseball Prospectus, originally published February 2021)

There’s a breakdancing first base coach. A senior citizen dance team, the Banana Nanas. A pep band that plays live music, like you’d expect from a college football or basketball game. The interns park cars in penguin suits. The ballpark bathrooms have urinal cakes and toilet paper with the rival team’s logo on them. The Bananas put out an ad for a professional high-fiver, and when the only person to respond was a six-year-old who showed up with his mom and started high-fiving people in the office, they hired him.

Golfers say their sport is made for social distancing. Not all officials agree. (Washington Post Magazine, May 2020)

Golf is unlikely to strike many as an essential activity during a global pandemic. It’s a game often associated with the rich as well as an avatar for the cluelessness and selfishness of presidents in times of crisis. But in the United States, about 75 percent of golf courses are open to the public, and the average greens fee is $39, according to the USGA. At many municipal courses, it’s far less.

When coronavirus closes schools, what happens to children who rely on them for food? (Washington City Paper, March 2020)

The citywide shutdown to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus has impacted every D.C. resident’s life, shuttering bars and restaurants and prompting raids on toilet paper, pasta, and frozen foods at local grocery stores. But with schools around the city facing potential weeks-long closures with no certain end date, a large percentage of D.C.’s children face a far more basic, pressing concern: How will I eat?

Sunset in Hagerstown? City, team fight for minor league survival (WTOP.com, Dec. 2019)

The automated voice that greets you when you call the Hagerstown Suns’ front office announces the club as “your single-A affiliate of the World Champion Washington Nationals.” This should be a time of celebration, considering 17 former Suns players and coaches were part of the Nats’ incredible run, including stars such as Juan Soto, who played in Hagerstown as recently as 2018. But for dozens of minor league teams this winter — including both the Suns and the Frederick Keys, a Baltimore Orioles affiliate — the hope and anticipation of the season to come has been replaced by anger and fear. That’s because, if Major League Baseball has its way, next spring may be their last.

How DC Washington became the voice of Washington sports (WTOP.com, Aug. 2019)

You’re probably wondering about his name. Such a perfect stage name as D.C. Washington is inspired for someone who plies his trade most publicly singing the national anthem at sporting events around our nation’s capital. Of course, his name’s not actually D.C. Washington. It couldn’t possibly be. Right? Some things are just meant to be.

The Popeye’s chicken sandwich won’t save your soul, or America’s (Medium, Aug. 2019)

The state of living in America in 2019 is one of waking up and bracing yourself for the next atrocity, state-sanctioned or otherwise, that might invade your life today. There is enough animosity in every aspect of our daily lives, in person and online, that just making it through a day without some national tragedy or personal infuriation has to be chalked up as a success. This takes a toll on our psyche, individually and collectively, and has produced the unfortunate side effect of people reaching out and latching on to anything good and pure in the world as a beacon of hope, embracing it as more than it is.

Monday night fútbol: Staff of José Andrés’ restaurants compete, bond through love of soccer (WTOP.com, Oct. 2018)

Fresh off a plane from … Chicago? He’s pretty sure it’s Chicago — he travels so much these days, from Florida, to Puerto Rico, to North Carolina, for his various philanthropic purposes — Andrés arrives in time to catch most of the final game. He ambles along the sideline to the midfield line, drinking a Mexican Coke and chomping on a sandwich from his food truck Pepe, on site to feed every employee on hand for the final. Almost immediately, he begins attracting a crowd, a human magnet with his own center of gravity, even with his back turned, watching the action.

World Cup Watch: Celebrating freedom by watching Iran (WTOP.com, June 2018)

Sports can often feel trivial, mere distractions from the real issues we battle each day in society. But this party isn’t a distraction. It’s a celebration, an embrace of freedom, not simply from confinement, but from the rules of society that divide and separate. And as the geopolitical sabers rattle on the other side of town, it’s a reminder that sports can give us a reason to unite, whether we’re from Iran, or Boston, or South Dakota.

Review: Beck shows all his colors at The Anthem (WTOP.com, April 2018)

There was surely some moment in time, linear or non, when Beck didn’t look the way he seemingly always has. Timeless, boyish, a blond mop tucked under some sort of hat. Thursday night that hat (fedora? bolero? don’t ask me, I’m not a hat expert) was black, the shirt beneath it a psychedelic, Starry Night-inspired navy pearl snap buttoned to the top button under a black blazer. He’s 47 years old now, if you’re the kind of person who counts such things; the more you consider how little that time seems to affect him, the less inclined you are to do so.

How a math professor created the information center of the sports world (WTOP.com, March 2018)

The ability to capture such knowledge is a phenomenon of its own, a feature far beyond the capability of any single human. A monkey interminably hacking away at a typewriter might eventually yield Shakespeare, but how many eons would it take an army of poor baseball information interns to sort every inning of every box score in baseball history? For the statistics nerds among us, such power borders on the divine. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that the offices from which the tools that can sort 2.7 million innings of baseball history reside in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, two floors above a church.

How Rio unraveled the big Olympic lie (WTOP.com, Aug. 2016 — submitted as part of station’s National Murrow Award-winning entry)

But now that every world record has been set, every victory celebrated, every anthem played and every tear shed for the lifetimes of hard work culminating in triumph on the world stage, it’s time to face the larger truth about the Olympics: They are redeeming for the athletic competition only. The so-called Olympic mission is long dead, and its system is in desperate need of reform. Ironically, with all of its health crises, environmental safety problems, social upheaval and crime concerns, we may have Rio de Janeiro to thank for finally putting the Olympic hypocrisy on display for the whole world to see.

On Huddy and Barry and why I’ll cry Saturday (Athletics Nation, Sept. 2015)

A lifelong baseball fan, I’ve owned an embarrassingly large amount of regalia over my lifetime. But I’ve only ever purchased two jersey shirts. I’ve considered getting others, but I’ve only actually spent my money on those two, which I still wear to games. They’re old and faded. They have holes. They don’t even fit that well anymore. But they’re still mine. They’re still ours.