How yesterday’s Home Run Derby might have played out – under my rules

One could look at the outcome of yesterday’s home run derby as a repudiation of my proposed plan to fix the tournament, published a few hours before it began. After all, Vladimir Guerrero – seeded lower and hitting first – won. But, to be clear, I never meant to imply that whoever hits second is destined to win – simply that they enjoy the advantage of being able to hit just enough home runs, and so can save their strength for later rounds. And on that point, I take the outcome of yesterday’s derby as something like vindication: the player who happened to be better-rested took home the hardware.

A modest proposal to fix the Home Run Derby

Last year’s home run derby put Julio Rodriguez on the map. The Seattle Mariners rookie hit 81 home runs, good for second-most all time (after Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s 91 in 2019). Before 2022, participants had hit as as many as 30 home runs in a single round only four times. Rodriguez pulled off this feat twice in one derby, hitting 32 and 31 across the first two rounds.

But despite this prodigious display of power, Julio and his 81 bombs did not win the derby. He lost to Juan Soto – who only hit 53. Julio hit 18 home runs in the final round, a total Soto topped by precisely one (1) to take home the trophy.

Two times Jon Lovett just missed the mark

In the most recent episode of his podcast, Jon Lovett riffed (6:56) on a London production of Romeo and Juliet that depicted Juliet as a Jew and Romeo as a Nazi Youth. Lovett’s first joke was fairly spot on (“very fine people on both sides”) but the second struck me as more of a near miss: “But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? Is that a menorah, Juliet? We’ve talked about this.” I appreciate the setup/premise of the joke. But the podcast was recorded the weekend before Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”). On this week, of all other weeks, it should not have been so hard to construct a Holocaust punchline involving “window” and “breaks”.

And since I just settled scores with an old podcast, I’ll take this as my opportunity to call back to one more Jon Lovett special. In late April, he participated in an interview of erstwhile Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. After Abrams shared a somewhat involved Jaws-based metaphor for voter suppression (41:30), Lovett couldn’t help but chime in to sum up her point: “We’re going to need a bigger democracy.” Maybe this was very subtlely his joke, but six and a half months later I still wish he’d gone with “We’re going to need a bigger vote.”

Giving the Mariners a little credit where it’s due

After I set fingers to keyboard for the first time in half a year the other day, a friend immediately responded via email: “lol, this was the story we needed to get you back?” Absolutely a fair question.

The main reason I raced to fact-check the fact checkers about something I’ll readily admit is fairly inconsequential was my concern that, with election day fast approaching, Kari Lake might soon fade from national headlines. At the time of this writing, my bet is looking pretty good: Katie Hobbs continues to hold a slim lead over Lake, and – hopefully – whoever is in charge of counting the votes in Arizona has enough “incompetency” to make sure her lead holds up. (For the record, the person in charge of counting votes in Arizona is named Katie Hobbs. Weird coincidence.)

But while what I have to say may sometimes be timely, sometimes it won’t. Today is one of those times, as I primarily find myself writing to report a fact that might well shock you. I recommend reading the following sentence slowly, to allow yourself time and space to safely absorb the following message: Somebody was once wrong on the internet.

Before that claim generates another incredulous email from my friend, I should clarify that the somebody in question was so wrong I still find myself thinking about it from time to time two years after I heard him say it.

Fact Check: The Washington Post’s misrepresentation of Kari Lake

Republican contenders in Arizona have been fervent in embracing Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

[Kari] Lake, the GOP’s nominee for governor, has called anyone who believes Biden won by 81 million votes a “conspiracy theorist.”

– Obama says democracy ‘may not survive’ in Arizona if Republicans win, Washington Post, November 3, 2022

When the Washington Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker wrote that Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake called anyone who believes Biden won by 81 million votes “a conspiracy theorist”, he was paraphrasing a real speech she delivered to Arizona voters just last week – but badly twisted her words in the process.

Bret Stephens isn’t worried about nuclear war for an astonishingly flimsy reason

I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve certainly thought about it, and I’ve had plenty to write about, but I’ve managed to keep myself occupied without putting pixels to LCD. I’m still pretty busy, but I came across something this morning so dumb and so dangerous that self-censorship was no longer an option: I came across Bret Stephens.

Stephens argued in yesterday’s column for the New York Times that NATO’s imposition of a no-fly zone in Ukraine would not risk nuclear war with Russia. I’m not here to comment on the substance of his argument. I’m here to comment on his evidence (emphasis added):

The Mandalorian didn’t kill your favorite meme; it just knit you a new one

Just wrote my first post about the Mandalorian, so why stop now?

The appearance of numerous Mon Calamari in last week’s episode of the show prompted Screenrant to declare that “Star Wars Has Finally Let The Ackbar Meme Die“. As someone who previously dabbled in Admiral Ackbar memes (and who was recently reminded of his handiwork by real-world New York Times headlines) I was obviously curious to find out what that meant.

Blaming the Baby Yoda backlash on ‘liberals’ is telling on yourself

A lot of really questionable posts make their way into my Facebook feed, but because I’m aware of the sort of content I regularly put out there (e.g. this blog), I generally try to bite my tongue and avoid calling out people I know in real life for what they choose to write and share online. But sometimes really dumb things are just too really dumb and I have to respond.

The post that demanded my response — seriously, I had no choice — is titled Baby Yoda’s ‘egg eating’ causes liberal consternation, and I assure you I’m only linking to it so you don’t suspect I made it up. The article’s basic premise appears to be that a) the people who are upset that Baby Yoda ate Frog Lady’s eggs are obviously liberals, and b) this discomfort renders them hypocrites because if they truly believe eating a sentient creature’s eggs is a bad thing to do, they must believe that aborting a fetus is even worse. BUT they probably also voted for Joe Biden, who supports abortion rights! Got em.

It’s very possible this effort to own the libs is also an attempt at comedy, but as I pointed out in the post that immediately precedes this one, the premise has to make sense for the joke to work. And where Trevor Noah can usually get away with a faulty premise, this author can’t. But even if you accept that liberals, in particular, were outraged over Baby Yoda’s raw omelet, what that lopsided concern implies about conservatives is even less flattering.

I’m not exactly sure where to start, so apologies in advance if this rejoinder is more than a little disjoinded.

Someone please explain to Trevor Noah how hurricanes work

As this year’s hurricane season continues to break records, it’s more important than ever that our public discourse reflects a nuanced understanding of how hurricanes work. Of course, that means media needs to be a lot better about linking increased hurricane intensity and climate change. But getting the little things right is also important for, at least, the sake of credibility.

Back in August, Trevor Noah did a little piece about how Hurricane Laura toppled a Confederate statute. Here’s how it ended:

Facebook shouldn’t moderate content because it doesn’t really know anything

It seems like everybody’s mad at Mark Zuckerberg these days. Conservatives allege Facebook has an anti-conservative bias and forced him to testify about it at Senate hearings. Liberals, unsurprisingly, complain that the platform actually has an inherent right-wing bias.

While there would not seem to be much room to stake out common ground between these two positions, some (like Steven Bannon) have pointed out that regulating social media like a public utility is one way for companies like Facebook to bow out of the content moderation business altogether.

I agree that Facebook should not be deciding what shows up in your feed — not because the job is unavoidably political but because it presupposes that anyone at Facebook knows something about anything.