Buy yourself a present! A site, a book, a shirt! All handcrafted for your amusement and edification! Seriously, I've seen this thing go through several evolutions over time, and more than ever, "labor of love" really describes it. Plus: baseball is everything, everything is baseball, and we know it.

An encore for this one, on players who have excluded vast swaths of humanity from whatever limited empathy they possess. PS: Today is the last day to lock in our old sub rates for 2026, just sayin'.

I resent all the defunct bookstores: mall-based ones like Waldenbooks and B.Dalton; Borders; Brentano's, even. We had small central NJ chains Titles Unlimited and Pyramid. Paperbacks Unlimited. Most of all, I miss the Cranbury Bookworm, a fire hazard of a house FILLED basement to attic w/used books.

Which makes it--what?--300 days until the lockout? It's hard to look forward to the '26 season with that hanging over everything.

"Look, matey, this parrot wouldn’t 'voom' if I put four thousand volts through it!" - John Cleese, Monty Python, you know which sketch.

Gee whiz, who among Epstein's collection of participant-witnesses REALLY LIKES getting paid off for things?

This is as bad and unjustified as anything that happened during the McCarthyite purges.

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

This has been made available, so for purposes of commenting on Bari Weiss's decision to spike the story, here's a live-post of that segment. It begins with a "you may recall" summary of the deportation to el Salvador. Describes the admin's claim that it could deport the men without due process

Can confirm: Pulled 60 Minutes “Inside CECOT” segment on the El Salvador mega prison housing hundreds of Venezuelan deportees sent by the U.S. is on Global TV’s free app

He knows what happened to the Repulse and the Prince of Wales in 1941, right? No? Of course he doesn't.

Hey, @cdgoldstein.baseballprospectus.com, I had a thought. How many new subscribers do we need for us to promise a ranking of every baseball strip in Peanuts' 50-year history? I want an excuse to re-read the entire run in order. Pick a number!

Join us for baseball analysis, statistics, love, laughter, and empathy!

In today's newsletter I talk about Cubs third baseman Matt Shaw showing up to speak at the White Supremacist-Palooza in Arizona over the weekend. Short version: he's dumb and naive and I feel sorry for him but he's made his bed too, so fuck that guy. www.cupofcoffeenews.com/cup-of-coffe...

Weird how The Free Press was able to publish all of these without comment from the Washigton University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

I'm not unfamiliar with Matt Shaw's version of compassion, because I've had supposed close friends sit me down and say, "We're concerned for your soul. All you have to do is discard everything you believe in." I wrote about this and other alienating developments-and Humphrey Bogart's baseball ad.

“These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.”

the vice president is a klansman

Biden was in office when this decision came out. Every day I wish he had been awake. I wish he had gone on TV and said, "Thanks for the huge grant of power. I reject it. However, if Congress and the states don't amend it away within X days, I'm gonna start heaving people into jail as motivation."

Things learned while doing baseball research: This very good boy won the Westminster dog show in 1948. At first, I thought it was a goat or one of those Star Wars "roger-roger" droids. It's actually a Bedlington terrier. They sound like a really charming breed.

1948 Listerine ad. "No, no, no! RFK Jr. says just let them attack you, for only the strong shall survive! He's much wiser than we were back in those primitive times!"

1948 Bell Telephone ad. Even then, they had to convince people that "when the telephone rings" your sense of serenity wasn't about to be disrupted/destroyed by something totally pointless and/or irritating.

* Number of additional unemployed Americans since January: 982,000. * Number of federal government job losses: 271,000. 🤡

Hey, so. The world is awful, etc. And because of that, I'd like to ask a favor: Please spend a few minutes between now and New Years sharing the work you were most proud of this year. People might have missed it, but also, it's nice to see people feel good about the work they do

The #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go. As a December kid, I can claim either "The Empire Strikes Back" or...

I have a new song out today! ♥️ “You Got Here First” is about when good love goes bad 🖤 Out now on Tiny Ghost Records 💜 vyd.co/YouGotHereFi...

Not stolen valor exactly, but stolen glamour? Stolen Camelot? Then again, given PT 109, it's stolen valor too. Anyway, lemme know when this guy has the pull to host dozens of Nobel Prize winners at a single dinner, as JFK did in 1962. He'd try to filch their awards.

very weird feeling watching a seemingly coked out president yell at you for 20 minutes straight

president sundown got mad the other night in a sundown moment and wanted to have a big foreign war and then got spooked about rubio’s big war and the viziers came up with all this whining, haranguing fucking horseshit in the last two hours after snorting an 8-ball

Next year, baseball fans, Nationals OF James Wood vows to cut his strikeouts by 600%. According to my calculations, he will be replacing his his 221 Ks with approximately 1300 flies and groundouts, including 84 GDPs. Since he will only bat 650 times, he will be making two outs per at-bat. Good?

The anti-Somalian rhetoric is unforgivable. The Klan holds the White House.

If there has been a period anywhere in this speech I haven't heard it. It's just one long shouted sentence. Those of you who have tried cocaine: is this what it's like?

He's not okay.

Someone tell the folks at Disney World their Trump animatronic is running way hot.

He seems to be running against Joe Biden again.

He ain't out to convert the uncovered, playing his empty-headed litany of imaginary accomplishments. Yet what concerns me is the people I've spoken to who are incapable of accepting that a POTUS can lie shamelessly.

I had intended to ignore it, but I weakened and tuned into tonight's installment of Frontal Lobe Dementia Live.

1. At the end of WWII, the US had all the money. 2. If you have ALL the money, no one else can buy your stuff and the world economy dies. 3. We kinda noticed that when the world economy dies, dictators rise. 4. Also, there was Stalin gobbling up Eastern Europe. 5. Dictators: bad for business. (1/3)

Very nearly up there with "At long last, do you have no sense of decency?"

Back in 2019, we @baseballprospectus.com published a series on the intertwined history of baseball and American imperialism in Venezuela. With their continuing relevance to current events, we've made the first of those stories free to all. www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

I had a boss whinge to me in nearly these exact words. My response: "I never asked you to do that, I wouldn't ask anyone to do that, and if you think you're doing it for me, you're not. GO HOME " I was s'posed to fall to my knees and shout, "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SACRIFICE," but I wouldn't.

If Trump launches an illegal war against Venezuela without congressional authorization Congress must impeach him immediately. He has no legal authority to start a war. It’s insane, unconstitutional, and criminal.

Every insurance co mascot is personified gaslighting. You think they're not going to slow-walk or deny your claim because they have a mascot? The last thing we need is some zebra in surgical scrubs saying, "You don't REALLY need that CT, and that's why Healthstripes can offer you coverage for less!"

Imagine a president who's not a sociopath...

Wishing a Joyous, Healthy and Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate.

My daughter went to college in Providence. We made many happy visits. The College Hill area is an open place, campus areas interspersed w/ancient houses, restaurants, shops. It's what you would imagine a college town to be. It's horrible that this has happened ANYWHERE, but there is esp. shattering.

I feel anxious just looking at this.

The Rangers have Sebastian Walcott and that’s cool. Past that it gets a little dicey. www.baseballprospectus.com/prospects/ar...

The devastation I feel about this attack on science in particular is hard to cope with. It’s like watching my dad die all over again. I would do anything to spare someone a death via pancreatic cancer.