Mother Jones
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With the NBA and NHL seasons coming to their respective conclusions last month, and football still months away, baseball is the lone remaining major sport as America celebrates Independence Day. In its century and a half of existence, baseball has provided the country with a never-ending stream of heroes, villains, and plenty of folks who sit squarely in between. Below, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite pieces of long-form journalism about America’s complicated relationship with the national pastime.
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Baseball Without Metaphor | David Grann | The New York Times Magazine | September 2002
Barry Bonds may have been baseball’s most feared hitter—as well as its most hated. The reigning home run king was denied entry to the Hall of Fame this year thanks to his role as the central figure in the sport’s massive steroid scandal, raising questions about what we value in athletes and their on-field accomplishments.
Perhaps no one has been more ravaged by this new machine than Barry Bonds, the most dominant player of the modern era. At the very moment when Bonds is edging closer to the all-time home-run record, when in another age he would be lionized for his grace and strength, he has become a new kind of archetype—”The poster boy for the modern spoiled athlete” and ”a symbol of baseball’s creeping greed and selfishness, complete with diamond earring.”
Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu | John Updike | The New Yorker | October 1960
Another icon who had a love/hate relationship with his hometown fans, Ted Williams is considered one of the greatest hitters in Major League history even considering the seasons he missed while serving as a fighter pilot in the Korean War. His hatred for the Boston media and refusal to doff his cap to the fans became just as much a part of his legend as his batting crowns and All-Star game appearances.
The affair between Boston and Ted Williams has been no mere summer romance; it has been a marriage, composed of spats, mutual disappointments, and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories. It falls into three stages, which may be termed Youth, Maturity, and Age; or Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis; or Jason, Achilles, and Nestor.
Mourning Glory | Chris Ballard | Sports Illustrated | October 2012
Here, Ballard explores the small town of Williamsport, Md., where the deaths of two ballplayers three years apart loom large over high school baseball coach David Warrenfeltz and the rest of the local sports community.
In the months that followed, Warrenfeltz was haunted by his friend’s death. He wrestled with why this happened to Adenhart, not to him—why he was allowed to keep playing baseball when Nick couldn’t. Even years later Warrenfeltz would be driving and suddenly have to pull over, tears blurring his vision. Maybe that helps explain why he returned home after finishing college, to make a life in the place his friends once dreamed of leaving. Why he became a coach.
What’s It Like To Sing The Anthem At A Baseball Game? The Story Of One Man’s Perilous Fight | Drew Magary | Deadspin | July 2012
What could be more American than belting out the national anthem before a baseball game? It may be a minor league game, but Magary still makes it his patriotic mission to not screw up too badly.
AND THE ROCKETS’ RED GLAAAAARE …
Singing this part feels like jumping a motorcycle off a rising drawbridge. It’s just a straight crescendo, going up and up and up. If you trip anytime before “glare,” you’re fucking dead. You won’t make it.
Inside Major League Baseball’s Dominican Sweatshop System | Ian Gordon | Mother Jones | March/April 2013
Prospect Yewri Guillén died of a preventable bacterial infection at a Washington Nationals training academy in the Dominican Republic. It turns out the Nationals, along with many other MLB teams, have no certified trainers or doctors at their camps, where they risk the health of their Dominican ballplayers to bring cheap talent back to the US.
Guillén’s death is the worst-case scenario in a recruiting system that treats young Dominicans as second-class prospects, paying them far less than young Americans and sometimes denying them benefits that are standard in the US minor leagues, such as health insurance and professionally trained medical staff. MLB regulations allow teams to troll for talent on the cheap in the Dominican Republic: Unlike American kids, who must have completed high school to sign, Dominicans can be signed as young as 16, when their bodies and their skills are far less developed.
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Here’s how you know that the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, attracts all of the world’s best and brightest: This morning, an audience heard from Derek Jeter.
If you don’t know who Derek Jeter is, allow me to explain. Imagine a group of pirates, a vile, filthy band of lawbreakers and miscreants. Now imagine this group had a captain who seemed perfectly nice and was very good at being a captain, but he’s spent his life in service to an evil, repulsive entity. That’s Derek Jeter. He’s the captain and star of the New York Yankees.
Jeter yells at someone, probably not about the climate.
But living in New York (until recently, in a $15.5 million apartment atop Trump World Tower) means that Jeter (despite his deep and abiding flaws) saw firsthand the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. From the Columbus Dispatch:
“It’s just something that’s gotten so much attention,” Jeter said of climate change. “Regardless of how you feel about it, it’s something that needs to be addressed because we’re seeing more and more natural disasters each year, it seems like. Something has to be causing it.”
But Jeter, himself a global icon as the captain of one of the most recognizable and successful sports franchises in the world, said he doesn’t try to interject into politics.
“I know my place,” Jeter said.
Jeter’s place is clearly among amoral, hypercompetitive overachievers.
The good captain is not alone in linking Sandy with climate change. A poll taken last December suggested that New Yorkers readily made that connection — with a concomitant increase in a desire to address the problem. Yesterday, we wondered if this would be the year that Davos attendees finally took real action on global warming; if a multi-millionaire athlete can help them do so, so be it.
In case you still don’t really get what Davos is all about, this might help explain: Baseball star Derek Jeter is at the convening — having been invited by Pepsi — where he talked about the climate. I’m not sure it can be summarized any better than that.
Jeter concerned about climate change, Columbus Dispatch
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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Baseball person Derek Jeter to world leaders: Climate change is a thing
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has decided that this is the perfect moment to launch a brand new congressional caucus. From The Hill:
[Boxer] said Tuesday that she’s forming a “climate change caucus,” and argues that Hurricane Sandy “changed a lot of minds” on the topic.
The move signals that Democrats might again be ready to aggressively promote bills to curb greenhouse gas emissions, even as the political prospects for global warming legislation remain remote in Congress.
“I am going to form a climate change caucus, because people are coming up to me, they really want to get into this. I think Sandy changed a lot of minds,” Boxer told reporters in the Capitol.
Pack it in, Chevron. Peace out, coal industry. Ya burnt, so to speak. After all, nothing gets things done like a congressional caucus.
That is why there are over 200 of them. A sampling:
2015 Caucus
30 Something Working Group
Americans Abroad Caucus
Armenian Caucus
Bike Caucus AKA Bicycle Caucus
Congressional Bourbon Caucus
Center Aisle Caucus
Congressional Automotive Caucus
Congressional Bicameral Arthritis Caucus
Congressional Boating Caucus
Congressional Caucus on Hellenic Issues
Congressional Caucus on Youth Sports
Congressional Correctional Officers Caucus
Congressional E-911 Caucus
Congressional Fraternal Caucus
Congressional HUBZone Caucus
Congressional Hockey Caucus
Congressional Horse Caucus
Congressional Kidney Caucus
Congressional Prayer Caucus
Congressional Ski and Snowboard Caucus
Congressional TRIO Caucus
Congressional Zoo and Aquarium Caucus
House Friends of Scotland Caucus
Senate Friends of Scotland Caucus
Future of American Media Caucus
German-American Caucus
House Afterschool Caucus
House Baltic Caucus
House Reading Caucus
Hungarian American Caucus
Interstate 69 Caucus
Liberty Caucus
Minor League Baseball Caucus
North America’s Supercorridor Caucus
Physics Caucus, The
Qatari-American Economic Strategic Defense, Cultural, and Educational Partnership Caucus
River of Trade Corridor Congressional Caucus
Shellfish Caucus
Stop DUI Caucus
TEX-21 Congressional Caucus [Ed. – I mean, does this have multiple members?]
Unexploded Ordnance Caucus
U.S.-Mongolia Friendship Caucus
Youth Challenge Caucus
Zero Capital Gains Tax Caucus
Oh, and:
Congressional Climate Caucus
… which was formed in 2006.
So the good news is that climate change is now one of the 250 or so most important issues in front of Congress. The bad news is that members will have to figure out which super-effective climate caucus is cooler.
Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.
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Sen. Boxer to form congressional ‘climate change caucus,’ which should do the trick
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