Topics on this week’s WISE Sports Radio baseball segment include a 1952 Mickey Mantle card going for $12.6 million, Justin Verlander’s calf injury, Ichiro being honored by the Seattle Mariners, a surprise number retirement for Willie Mays, and Paul Goldschmidt’s MVP-caliber season for the St. Louis Cardinals.
We also discuss the Major League Baseball Players Association giving minor-league players the opportunity to join their union, a benefit that is long overdue for a labor force that is woefully underpaid.
The 2022 Major League Baseball season is in its early days, so storylines are just beginning to develop. For instance, Shohei Ohtani’s apparent slow start. But the reigning American League Most Valuable Player looks like he’s finding the form that made him a superstar last season.
On WISE Sports Radio, we also discussed Trevor Bauer preparing to make things difficult for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs ownership deciding not to bid on Chelsea Football Club, and Ichiro’s impressive ceremonial first pitch. Oh, and the USFL dusted off some nostalgic brand names to give spring football another shot.
We’re late with Not a Newsletter once again, after showing promise last week with an early posting. But after talking with friends and family, it was determined that one of the remedies for that which is currently driving me crazy is to try and unplug as much as possible on weekends.
As I’m sure is the case for many of you, that’s not easy for me. Work and leisure inhabit much of the same space. If I’m reading something, it’s probably online. (I really am trying to pick up books and magazines…) If I’m watching something, it might also be online, especially if it’s streaming.
Thus, a message from work or a topic that could make a story is only an alert or click away. Then I look at the clock and I’ve wasted most of a Saturday or Sunday sitting at a computer. It’s not making me pleasant. Unpleasant may be my default setting, but there are degrees of unpleasantness. Unfortunately for those around me, I’ve been on the “very unpleasant” side of that spectrum.
So maybe this would have been posted earlier otherwise. But maybe — probably not, but maybe — I was also a more pleasant human being on Sunday.
This was watched
Since I’m online most of the day, constantly looking for story topics while editing and writing, most entertainment before 4 p.m. ET has to come in quick hits. Twitter and Facebook provide plenty of that, naturally, but YouTube has also become a reliable source for chuckles.
As a result, I’ve become a fan of WIRED’s “Answers the Web’s Most Searched Questions” series, in which celebrities answer the questions that people ask about them on Google. (Another favorite is Vanity Fair’s “Fear Box” series, in which celebrities reach into a box and try to figure out what they’re touching. Yep, I love celebrities.)
The cast of This is Us is adorable, and thus this episode of the WIRED series is adorable.
Words were read
** This is probably going to be the year of Donald Glover. He’s going to play young Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story. There will probably be new music to come, though not from Childish Gambino. And Season 2 of Atlanta is playing now on FX, which is what most of this article — which took me longer to read than I’d like to admit — is about. [New Yorker]
Ian Casselberry 