Blog Post
With Apologies To Jumbo, The Day Off Was Sort Of Nice
I don’t know about you, but I spent the day not watching baseball. I did tune in briefly to the end of the White Sox game tonight, but what I saw was not encouraging. I saw a tough and resiliant team which is, at least at the moment, showing why it’s the best –and certainly … Read more
Not Sleeping
He would get up from his bed each morning in the long hours after midnight, confused, sour with his inability to sleep, insomnia the curse of his life, stretching all the way back to when he was a boy and was still excited to imagine all the wonders and revelations he might miss every night … Read more
Uncle Jumbo's Playground
–Illustration by James Dankert It’s my older brother Rich’s 25th wedding anniversary this weekend, and his wife’s family is throwing a big party for the special occasion. There are almost certainly no two words in tandem that I hate more than “special occasion.” My brother and his wife may be the only couple on the … Read more
Every Day, In Every Way, I'm Getting Better And Better
Many a man has cherished for years as his hobby some vague shadow of an idea, too meaningless to be positively false; he has, nevertheless, passionately loved it, has made it his companion by day and by night, and has given to it his strength and his life, leaving all other occupations for its sake, … Read more
Objects In The Rearview Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
The bad news is that the Twins aren’t scoring many runs. The good news is that neither are the White Sox. As I mentioned the other day, the Central race looks increasingly like it’s going to come down to which team’s pitching can carry it the longest. There is, of course, always the possibility that … Read more
Excuses
I’m out the rest of the week, but encourage you to check out the new issue of the magazine, which rocks pretty good, I think. If you’re especially nuts for silly gossip and local crazy-talk, and you want to know why we’ve been getting so many dirty looks from our so-called competitors lately, look at … Read more
A Vulture With A Wicked Curveball
Tonight Jesse Crain picked up his fourth win of the season out of the bullpen, and it looks like he’s on his way to eventually supplanting Juan Rincon as the main set-up man for Joe Nathan. He’s also looking like pretty good insurance for Nathan in the event that disaster strikes. I love Crain enough … Read more
The Opposite of Right is Not Always Left
It took us three days to get through Michael Sokolove’s provocative piece in the New York Times magazine about Sen. Rick Santorum—partly because we couldn’t stop talking about it before reading to the end. (A long, loud discussion over beers at Pizza Luce on Sunday night was especially energetic.) Of course, we can’t plan these … Read more
Everyone's A Meta-Critic
On Friday, Timothy Noah published the results of his online survey which asked the question, “If you had to pay to read each New York Times columnist, how much would you pay?” Apropos of the Times announcing that they were going to place their columnists in a premium subscription-only area of the Times website, Noah … Read more