Major League Baseball’s players union, as expected, offered tweaks to the sport’s existing economic model. Team owners, as expected, countered with a hard salary cap. Then the first grenade of MLB’s epic labor showdown rolled into the room. This week, President Donald Trump endorsed a hard salary cap. Good.

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MLB is the only major American league without a hard salary cap. There are several reasons for that, but more or less it’s because of the players’ enduring solidarity. (A satisfying corollary to this is MLB owners’ unique ineptitude. “Gentlemen,” past Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner once said to his colleagues, “we have the only legal monopoly in the country and we’re fucking it up.”) Now, with the league’s collective bargaining agreement expiring after this season, team owners are again pushing for a salary cap.

The owners are sure to lockout the players the minute the agreement expires, preempting the players from striking, at which point there will be plenty of time to dive into the many salient and consequential issues of baseball’s work stoppage. For this piece, I take at face value that a salary cap would be bad for fans.

I’ve written about it before (see story linked above), and I will write about it again, but the gist is that a salary cap or any “artificial” control on wages decreases talent on the field. In other words, lower wages equals worse baseball. MLB’s arbitration system, which grants a team control of a player for their first six years of service in the major leagues, is essentially a salary cap for young players. This means we often get players on our favorite teams who don’t belong in the Bigs. They’re there because they’re cheap.

Take my nemesis Alec Bohm, the Philadelphia Phillies’ third baseman. In his first three full seasons, he accrued 0.9 fWAR per season. If the Phillies had replaced him with a league-average player, then they wouldn’t have lost much. Why didn’t they do that, to see if they could get more production from someone else? Because Bohm earned an average salary of just $679,333 in those three years.

Fangraphs found that, since 2020, the average cost of a 0-1 fWAR in free agency was nearly $7.4 million. Despite atrocious defense and underwhelming power, Bohm kept his starting job because his contract was a screaming deal, but one only made possible by MLB’s stringent control of young players’ salaries. To put a finer point on it, MLB made me yell at my television every time Bohm grounded into a double play because the league despises labor making fair wages.

Owners want to expand that control across all players, and Trump supports the owners’ cause. “If you don’t have a salary cap you don’t have a sport, because they can’t help themselves,” Trump told reporters. “They should have done it a long time ago.” To the first point, Trump is obviously wrong. MLB has never been more popular or lucrative, and it has never had a salary cap.

To the second point, he’s presumably referring to owners’ not being able to stop themselves from spending, which is an incorrect sentiment. He must not know the Miami Marlines and Pittsburgh Pirates exist. Lastly, he’s presumably referring to the cataclysmic labor battle in 1994 and he presumably thinks the owners can unilaterally impose a salary cap. That’s exactly what they tried in ‘94 and it shut down the sport for almost a year and required federal intervention.

The players union offered no comment in response to Trump’s remarks, but I welcome them. Trump is incredibly and by some metric historically unpopular. If he takes a stance, then at least 60% of the country opposes it just because. This is important because the owners are trying to make a salary cap popular by couching it in fans’ interest. Salary caps do not result in parity, and anyway, parity is boring. Trump’s unpopularity is undercutting the owners’ rhetorical dance.

This is not to say Trump will make labor negotiations easy for the players. Trump controls a federal apparatus that is virulently anti-labor, and many MLB owners are major Trump donors/supporters. In the most corrupt administration in modern times, that’s not an insignificant consideration. The union will have to tread lightly.

But it was not for nothing that Republican senators rebelled at Trump’s $1.8 billion fund for political allies, and that the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted for a resolution to reign in Trump’s war-making in Iran, and that state legislators across the country are resorting to extreme gerrymandering to protect Republican majorities. Americans have soured on Trumpism, and that’s good for baseball.

The attorneys general from New York and the great state of New Jersey launched an investigation this week into FIFA’s 2026 World Cup ticketing practices. “Being honest about ticket sales is not complicated,” New Jersey Attorney General Jen Davenport, said in a statement. “But FIFA has turned buying a ticket to the World Cup into a gauntlet of confusion, fake scarcity, and impossibly high prices — all at the expense of consumers and hardworking New Jerseyans.”

That’s exactly what FIFA has done, and its president Gianni Infantino is not shy about it. “We could have [sold all the tickets],” Infantino said at one point in the lead-up to next month’s World Cup, but “we want to keep a few for continuous sale until the start of the tournament to give opportunities to latecomers.” (A few could be as much as 1.2 million tickets.) And at a recent gala, Infantino said the extremely high ticket prices are simply what the American market can bear (even though FIFA is sitting on those 1.2 million unsold tickets, and there are countless already-purchased tickets relisted on secondary markets).

At this point, FIFA’s commitment to its dynamic pricing model seems at once like free marketing and performance art. It’s so shameless and audacious that you have to tip your cap, though the investigation is welcome news. But it will change nothing about this World Cup. It may not change anything at all. That’s because this issue is political, and politics is about power, and politicians in the U.S. are unserious about it.

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It’s not clear that the actions Davenport railed against are criminal in the first place. FIFA is committed to business practices that would earn them terrible reviews on Yelp, but dynamic pricing is common in the entertainment industry. Even Bruce Springsteen, who just toured in resistance to the Trump administration, defended dynamic pricing he used in 2022 and remained stubborn in the face of fan disaffection.

It’s true that Ticketmaster/Live Nation are in the midst of a bruising antitrust battle, and a jury recently found that the conglomerate used its monopoly to overcharge customers, but ticketing platforms are separate from event organizers. Lawyers in that antitrust case didn’t prosecute Springsteen.

Economically, dynamic pricing is an efficient mechanism for balancing supply and demand. Perhaps it’s most familiar on our roads. Tolls often increase during rush hours, incentivizing roads users to ditch single-occupancy vehicles when congestion is worse. Of course, outsized revenues during rush hour get reinvested in the publicly owned transportation systems, while event organizers realize private profits. The tool itself is not evil, though.

This is not to absolve FIFA of guilt. It very well may have used illegal business practices, but I think FIFA’s biggest crime is being unpopular. Attorneys general are elected officials, and taking down bogeymen is their political red meat. A lot of Americans with disposable income (i.e. voters) don’t like FIFA right now, and FIFA has cozied up to Trump, who is also unpopular right now. It’s a simple calculation for a Democratic prosecutor.

It was also a simple calculation for lawmakers and administrators to do nothing about ticketing monopolies and the advances in consumer technology and deceptive business practices before the World Cup. Two New Jersey Congressmen sent a nastygram to FIFA a few weeks ago, and in March 68 others implored FIFA to lower World Cup ticket prices. It’s the perfect, risk-free tactic for legislators. They wag their fingers, showing their constituents that they care, while they foreclose on their actual power of making law.

This is how attorneys general got their golden opportunity, but in representing individual states their power is limited. I’m also doubtful whether they’ll continue their investigation after FIFA’s circus pulls up its stakes. It’s the federal government, with its enduring authority to regulate interstate commerce, that would need to protect us consumers from FIFA (or anything other craven multinational business).

There is precedent for this. In 2015, the FBI arrested several FIFA executives and associated soccer officials on charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies. It was shocking news at the time, and I’m not sure if it’s because it was the soccer or the corruption the U.S. finally cared about. "If you touch our shores with your corrupt enterprise, whether that is through meetings or through using our world class financial system, you will be held accountable for that corruption," then-FBI director James Comey said.1

The FBI coordinated with law enforcement agencies in other countries, and it will take similar international collaboration to continue taming a beast like FIFA. As the Guardian outlined, FIFA is now $13 billion organization, one that owns the responsibility of organizing the world’s most popular sport. A friend of mine suggested that FIFA wouldn’t notice the money it “loses” if it priced their tickets fairly and transparently and used a lottery, but I’m not so sure. By moving the World Cup to the U.S. and adopting dynamic pricing, FIFA has been able to increase its hospitality and ticket sales from $950 million in 2022 to $3 billion.

That revenue is then sprinkled throughout the world like soccer fairy dust. $12.5 million to every team qualifying in the World Cup. A total prize pool of $871 million. $100 million to U.S. Soccer Federation for hosting the games. $2.7 billion to FIFA’s members and continental confederations. The attorneys general may investigate FIFA and they may ultimately win some restitution, but would U.S. Soccer want its compatriots to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?

FIFA tentacles are wrapped around all facets of culture, business, and politics. It knows that, and it is intentional. We and our elected representatives call FIFA greedy. We are right. But more importantly, FIFA’s high ticket prices are about maintaining and further entrenching its power. No elected representative is serious about taking that on.

It’s Springsteen, ironically, who suggests a way forward.

On the Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour, the one hastily put together after federal authorities occupied Minneapolis this past winter, Springsteen peppered the show with defiant political speeches. “So many of our elected leaders have failed us, that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people,” he said at one point in his routine.

It’d be incorrect and inappropriate to equate high World Cup ticket prices to immigration authorities terrorizing a city for no reason, but I do believe that the many forms of exploitation we’re experiencing today come from a common source: Rich and powerful people, typically men, think they can get away with anything. They are right. They are succeeding.

But nothing in politics is inevitable. If there is hope, then it is found in us. “The last check on power after the checks and balances of government have failed,” Springsteen said, “are the people. You and me.”

It has rained in Philadelphia this holiday weekend for four straight days, and I’ve scrolled Instagram for just as long. This mean I’ve consumed a lot of soccer content, and chatter in my group chats is picking up about the World Cup, too. With the tournament less than three weeks away, my overall impression is this: I have no idea how it will go. No one does.

Below are four investigatory questions.

Will the stadiums be filled?

Tickets to the 2026 World Cup are infamously expensive. Even Donald Trump, for whom FIFA invented its Peace Prize, said he wouldn’t pay the $1,120 to get into the U.S. men’s national team’s June 12 matchup against Paraguay. FIFA president Gianni Infantino defended FIFA’s dynamic ticketing scheme by claiming it’s simply what the U.S. market can bear. When that’s not convincing, he shames. “In the U.S., you can’t attend a college game, let alone a top-tier professional event, for under $300,” Infantino said. “And this is the World Cup!”

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But is the World a hot ticket? Last month, FIFA issued a previously unannounced “front ticket” category and downgraded a tranche of already purchased tickets. This month, FIFA told The Athletic that “it has sold 100 per cent of the inventory it has so far put on the market, which… is approximately 90 per cent of the global total.”

The Athletic reported this week that ticket brokers estimate FIFA hasn’t sold up to 20% of its inventory, or 1.2 million tickets. FIFA denies this. Ticket brokers also said FIFA’s per-transaction cap on tickets favored third-party brokers. FIFA also denies this. But FIFA’s denials this week appear to contradict what it said last month to The Athletic:

For most or all World Cup matches, FIFA appears to be holding back tickets, creating an illusion of scarcity. FIFA president Gianni Infantino said last week that his organization has “sold around 5 million” of the roughly 6.7 million expected to be available. “We could have” sold all tickets, Infantino added, but “we want to keep a few for continuous sale until the start of the tournament to give opportunities to latecomers.”

Weighing on ticket demand is the Trump administration’s immigration and international policy. This week, USA Today reported that the Department of Homeland Security is considering halting processing at airports in so-called sanctuary cities. It seems to be the latest tactic in an intra-administration war over who can get their boss’s favorable attention, for in the week prior the State Department waived visa bonds for World Cup visitors. (Infantino hailed the State Department’s move, a return to the status quo, as if world hunger had been abolished.)

I don’t care about FIFA’s finances. No one should, except prosecutors. But the cost of World Cup tickets and the lack of transparency around their issuance dampens the vibes and increases the likelihood of half-filled stadiums. Not only would that be embarrassing for the U.S. on the world stage, but it would also be an aesthetic distraction for TV viewers and could dampen the energy in what should be the most exciting soccer in the world.

FIFA should have learned its lesson. It used dynamic pricing for last summer’s Club World Cup, also played in the U.S., and they had to dump tickets at the last minute for as low as $13. Only 22,000 fans attended a Chelsea-LAFC match with a capacity of 70,000.

The World Cup is almost certainly not sold out. In a PR coup for New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, FIFA announced this week that it is making available to New Yorkers low-cost tickets. FIFA would not have done this had it not realized the limits of kissing MAGA’s ass and if tickets were selling like hot cakes. This doesn’t necessarily mean people won’t be at the games because… [waves at the complex and loosely regulated web that entangles originator/wholesalers, resellers, and customers in a game of supply-and-demand chicken on digital platforms].

Are bookings for lodging on pace?

No.

But also yes?

World Cup organizers promised the tournament would be an economic boon, but as I wrote last week the economic impacts of sporting events almost always miss projections. Recent news that hotel bookings for the World Cup are short of forecasts all but confirm that the World Cup will be an economic dud (even if short-term vacation rentals are seeing a bump). What’s more interesting is who this World Cup ends up being for.

FIFA marketed it as a global event landing in the world’s great entertainment market, and Infantino assumed the American stereotype: “We are here to celebrate the FIFA 2026 World Cup draw, which will be the greatest FIFA World Cup ever. It’s much more than a sporting event. It’s simply the greatest event that humanity, that mankind, has ever seen and will ever see.” (This is a real quote.)

FIFA’s now scrambling because Infantino’s charm offensive failed to soften the U.S.’s immigration policy or rhetoric and because Trump holds no purchase with local Democrats in the cities hosting the games. FIFA is going to have to dump tickets and American locals, trained since birth on how to navigate secondary markets, are lying in wait.

Should FIFA have always focused on the U.S. domestic market? Would that have made for a better World Cup? Or at least a more coherent and less icky World Cup experience? These are yet more questions that no one can answer decisively.

Can fans tailgate?

At least in Philadelphia: Yes, according to The Athletic. “Welcome to Philadelphia, where walking and tailgating are encouraged,” the outlet cheekily wrote in its World Cup city guide.

But according to internet sleuths: No. And according to me: Not very comfortably.

I’ve walked from Center City Philadelphia to the sports complex. Traversing where I-76 bisects South Philly, then Broad Street’s approximately 25 lanes, then all the parking lots is as soothing and inviting as a dentist’s chair.

In any case, the confusion around tailgating in Philly reflects the confusion around the fan experience for the entirety of the tournament. Are fan zones in host cities free or do they have paid entry? Better check! Is public transit available and not $98? Not in New Jersey! Of course, the ticket situation inherently devalues dedicated fans, and it’s those dedicated fans that establish the vibes. They could not be lower. But also it’s the World Cup and it’s exciting as hell? I’m so confused.

Will the 2026 World Cup be less of a mess than the 1994 World Cup?

Thanks to the Sideline Archive YouTube channel, here’s a list of happenings leading up to or during the U.S.-hosted 1994 World Cup:

• A poll found 71% of Americans didn’t know their country was hosting the tournament.

• At the World Cup draw in Las Vegas, actor Robin Williams repeatedly referred to then-FIFA president Sepp Blatter as “Sepp Bladder” and made several bathroom jokes at his expense.

• Oprah fell through a stage.

• A heat wave imperiled player safety, but FIFA imposed a ban on drinking water.

• Coverage of O.J. Simpson’s white Ford Bronco interrupted game broadcasts in several markets.

• Maradona failed a drug test in what would be his last World Cup.

• The tournament started with a missed penalty kick by Diana Ross (yes, the singer) and it ended with a missed penalty kicked by Italy’s legendary Roberto Baggio.

The 1994 World Cup was played in American football stadiums in sweltering heat amid uncertain geopolitics. The Germany team was playing its first World Cup as a unified nation. Russia was playing its first after the breakup of the USSR. Tournament favorites Colombia was suffering through drug cartel turf wars, narco-terrorism, and armed conflict among political factions.

But the ‘94 World Cup was and remains the best attended in the history of the tournament, and it produced a dramatic final between two heavyweights in Italy and Brazil. We may not know what the hell is going on with the 2026 World Cup, but, for better or worse, that won't stop us from putting on a show.

A friend in France recently asked me about New Jersey, indicating my native state’s long-awaited ascension into international renown and respect. Yes, yes, we are, in fact, hosting the World Cup, behind only the Olympics, which Paris recently hosted, as one of the biggest sporting events in human history, and yes, we are hosting the tournament’s final game.

But there was a kicker. There’s always a kicker with New Jersey (sometimes literally).

No, no, you cannot walk to any of the games that New Jersey is hosting—it’s not only illegal but also impossible—and no, it is not a joke: Public transit tickets from New York City’s Penn Station to MetLife Stadium in Jersey do indeed cost $98.

“Well, that’s just being a bad host,” my friend scoffed. It’s a response that’s still rattling around in my brain not because of the typical Parisian brusqueness, but because its criticism is so annoyingly precise and its implications so far-reaching.

On the surface, it’s a sentiment sympathetic of FIFA. “The NJ Transit current pricing model will have a chilling effect,” soccer’s global governing body said last month. “This… creates broader ripple effects that ultimately diminish the economic benefit and lasting legacy the entire region stands to gain from hosting the World Cup.” FIFA is hardly a moral light, though, having long ago sold its soul to placate the ego of Donald Trump, and in its fight with New Jersey it’s wielding the wrong argument.

The economic impacts of sporting events are almost always overstated. That’s because sports are but a fraction of a metropolitan region’s economic activity, and they don’t occur in a vacuum. People with the money to spend on sports would spend that money on something else. Venues booked for the World Cup could have been used for something else. (Looking at you, Monster Jam.)

I will grant that the 2026 World Cup is using facilities that already existed, so the capital expense for host cities is near zero. (Stadium subsidies are the cause célèbre here at Out in Left.) Additionally, the international nature of the tournament will bring to the U.S. tourists who otherwise wouldn’t have visited.

So FIFA is basically claiming that the boost in local incomes and tax revenue from the World Cup will be greater than the operational costs—transit, public safety, fan zones, etc.—of hosting the tournament. Will there be an additive economic impact? If you do the accounting just right, then sure, maybe. Will it be transformational? Almost certainly not.

After the dust settled from the 2024 Paris Olympics, arguably the best, most successful of the modern games, auditors determined that “hosting the 2024 Paris Olympics generated only moderate revenues for France, with an almost negligible impact on [economic] growth.” The organizing committee itself posted a €75.7 million profit. That’s a nice chunk of cheese, but it’s modest in relation to the committee’s multi-billion euro budget. And France accomplished that with 9.5 million tickets sold and 11.2 million visitors overall during the Games. The 2022 World Cup sold a third as many tickets and attracted a tenth as many visitors.

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The American public has caught on to this math and hype. The Athletics play in someone’s backyard in West Sacramento because Oakland refused to subsidize a new ballpark. Two years ago, voters in Kansas City rejected a tax measure to replace aging facilities for the NFL’s Chiefs and MLB’s Royals. In 2016, San Diego voters rejected a tax for a new Chargers’ stadium, effectively running the team out of town. From Buffalo to Tampa to Nashville, sports facilities are funded only through legislative means anymore because politicians know subsidies on the ballot are dead on arrival.

There’s also what I’d call a “fair share” populism coursing through politics right now. Cost of living is increasing, sure, but what’s more animating are the inequalities endemic to American life, which seem to be growing more grotesque. Zohran Mamdani rode this wave into New York’s mayorship, and now he’s on a media blitz about holding slumlords accountable to their tenants. More importantly, he used the “tax the rich” slogan like a cudgel in budget negotiations, and ultimately he got a so-called pied-à-terre tax and fended off cuts to city services.

But the negative photo of “fair share” populism is a politics of getting even. It’s a vengeful form of populism, one that believes that oppressing or extracting will lead to personal fulfillment. This is essentially Trumpism, but as with a coin you cannot take just one side. Some politicians, like Mamdani, are better at shepherding the flock towards greener pastures, employing positively valenced rhetoric and achieving positive social outcomes. But we’ve seen and are living the consequences of this kind of politics being wielded by lesser and more sinister hands.

In any case, it makes sense why New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill makes a show of exorbitantly charging tourists for public transit and refusing to allow her constituents to subsidize the operational costs of the World Cup. It’s simply good politics, and it’s the politics we are familiar with: The math ain’t mathing, so someone must pay. The calculation is made even easier for Sherrill, a Democrat, when the organization she’s sparing with has so cravenly indulged the MAGA-verse.1

These political machinations don’t address my friend’s fundamental concern: What does it mean to be a good host?

If we were hosting a dinner party, then would we charge our guests ten times the normal amount to get to our house? Would we charge them for anything? The Trump administration has limited or eliminated visas for residents of several countries that qualified for the World Cup. He even suggested that the lives of Iran’s national team were at risk if they chose to come to the U.S. and play in the tournament. Would we make our dinner guests attain special passes to enter our home? Would we make attaining that pass difficult and demeaning? And would we threaten the lives of our friends? I hope not, to say the least.

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The Paris transit authorities did nearly double fares during the 2024 Olympics, but that was to €4 (or about $4.65) per ride, not $98, and it was to cover the cost of a 15% increase in train services across the transit system for almost two months. NJ Transit is providing extra service only before and after New Jersey’s eight World Cup games, and it’s only for those with dedicated $98 tickets. To continue the strained metaphor, Paris expected their guests to bring a bottle of wine and mingle. New Jersey wants its guests to hand over the keys to their car and shut up.

To put a finer point on it, being a good host is rooted in values—communion, compassion, reciprocity, hospitality, and so on. Holding guests accountable to what they cost is not being a good host, for that’s a calculation sourced in politics, and politics is about power, and power does not—cannot—tolerate values.

FIFA put itself in an impossible position. To extract as much value as possible from the American consumer market, it has hitched its wagon to the ultimate shakedown artist in Donald Trump. In turn, FIFA has no moral or political standing with New Jersey Democrats, who are the people actuating the World Cup. But they, too, put themselves in an impossible position.

They ride the sugar high of Trump’s unpopularity without offering a political vision themselves, so as to put off their own unpopularity. In this sort of quandary, which defines the current political era, the only tactic is getting even in the game which your opposition plays. And in this very public cage match about dollars and cents we are losing so much more than money.

Hungover from a wedding in Ireland and with time to kill before my flight back to Paris, I committed myself to the most literary of transportation methods: I walked the 6.8 miles (or 11 kilometers)…

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I knelt before my editor at Padres Mission, and with a sword he tapped on one of my shoulders, and he tapped the other, then I rose to my feet and solemnly nodded, my mission understood: For the love of God, write something different about José E. Feliciano.

The Wa…

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“The year is 2020. Olivia Rodrigo is working on a new album. The Trump administration is trying to figure out what to do with Iran. And San Diego Padres catcher Luis Campusano is primed for a breakout.

It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

So begins my first piece for Padres …

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I felt like a bozo, sitting there at the pub and looking up at the TV. Expecting Tottenham Hotspur to offer anything besides a desultory performance turned into a fool’s errand, and for that errand I wore a vintage Spurs shirt. By the 87th minute, Spurs were losing 3-0 at home. I was reminded of the opening verse of Springsteen’s “Reason to Believe”:

See…

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Update: I first published this essay a year ago, almost to the day, and I was reminded of it for three reasons. First, Europeans really don’t care about American college basketball. I cannot find this year’s NCAA tournament anywhere in France—if you like televised snooker, then I know just the continent for you—and my lack of familiarity with college basketball this season is reflected in my standing in last place in my bracket competition, a competition I won handily last year.

Second, just one of San Diego’s Division I basketball teams made the tournament this year, and the UCSD women’s team was trounced in its only game. This puts last year’s achievement, when the city sent four teams to the Dance, in greater perspective.

Third, a friend and former colleague from San Diego visited Paris this week. We reminisced about our city, and I complained, yet again, why the absence of an inanimate object (clouds) is the source of civic pride. As San Diego poet Ernie McCray wrote recently for , “I’d go so far as to say / that the city and the UT / owe these remarkable athletes / an apology.

Originally published March 23, 2025

San Diego is the best college basketball city in the country.

There are more accomplished regions, of course. North Carolina’s “Research Triangle” boasts 13 men’s national championships among Duke, University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State University.

There are more accomplished states. What would be the point of Indiana or Kentucky if not for college basketball?

And there are cities that have produced more NBA players, including Los Angeles, which, to many San Diegans, is like Voldemort. It’s the city that shall not be named yet we are fixated on it.

But there is only one city—not a metro region, not a state, but a single city—that sent four teams to the men’s and women’s NCAA tournament this year, and that is San Diego. That accomplishment has been years in the making, and it improbably starts with the nerds.

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Until last weekend, UCSD had 27 more Nobel Prize winners than NCAA tournament berths, which is to say the university has 27 Nobel Prize winners. For years, the men’s and women’s basketball teams dominated the Division II ranks, and in a move compelled by student-athletes UCSD athletics rose to Division I in 2020. 

“The students were the ones that created the impetus for Division I, because as they looked at UC San Diego, and they looked at other high profile schools, [Division I] was a missing denominator,” UCSD director of athletics Earl W. Edwards told me in October. “So the students came to us and said, ‘We'd like to move to Division I.’”

Because the NCAA makes no sense, that move initiated a four-year “reclassification period,” in which the university would compete in Division I athletics but not be eligible for postseason play. A lot of locals probably didn’t know that the school could make March Madness this year, and to most non-San Diegans UCSD is irrelevant. (Just don’t say that to an aspiring engineer or scientist.)

Perhaps surprisingly, the men’s team won the regular season Big West Conference title in a wire-to-wire romp, then won the conference tournament to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. They entered March Madness on a 15-game winning streak and with 30 wins overall. Only five other teams in Division I eclipsed that mark heading into the tournament. Three contributors stand out.

Senior guard/forward Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones was named the Big West Player of the Year and also took home the Out in Left Best Name Award. Head coach Eric Olin was honored as the Big West Coach of the Year for the second consecutive season. Senior guard Hayden Gray was named the conference’s best defensive player and is one of ten finalists for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year Award. The three sat shoulder-to-shoulder at the podium after the team’s victory in the Big West final over UC Irvine. 

“They’re the ones that changed our program. They’re the ones that people come out to watch,” Olin said of his players. “The way that they play, the way that they share the ball, how selfless they are, how much fun they have—it resonates with people. That’s what people come out to see. Our campus and the San Diego community will absolutely support great basketball, and these guys played great basketball all year. The sellouts at home, the fans we had at Irvine, the fans in line to get in at our home games—all of that is a byproduct of the way they play basketball.”

The UCSD women’s team had a less successful regular season, entering the Big West Conference tournament at 17-15, but behind star sophomore guard and San Diego native Sumayah Sugapong the Tritons beat three teams in the conference tournament to punch their ticket to the Big Dance.

It’s a similar story across town for the San Diego State women’s team. (UCSD is a few stops down the Blue Line and a transfer at Old Town away from SDSU. Please let me know what the rail connection is between USC and UCLA.) A solid regular season preceded a remarkable conference tournament—the Aztecs won in an epic triple-overtime final against Wyoming, giving the program its first NCAA tournament bid since 2012.

For the SDSU men’s team, it’s business as usual, and that business is being pound-for-pound the best college basketball program in the country. Their at-large bid marked the fifth-consecutive appearance in the NCAA tournament. It would have been the sixth, had Covid not cancelled the 2020 NCAA tournament. At 30-2, the Aztecs were then having their greatest season ever.

This year’s tournament bid is their 14th since 2002, when legendary coach Steve Fisher turned the program around. Sprinkled in that span are four Sweet Sixteen appearances and, under current coach Brian Dutcher, a run to the 2023 championship game. Dutcher is San Diego’s Coach K, if Coach K had been underpaid, under-resourced, and underappreciated.

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Discussing San Diego sports requires qualifiers. It’s the largest media market without an NFL team. Until Peter Seidler’s ownership, the Padres had long been dismissed as a small-market minnow (and the team is devolving into that again after Seidler’s passing in 2023). The city’s college programs are considered mid-majors. There have been no major sports championships since 1963.

Finally, with four teams in the NCAA tournaments, the city had something to claim as its own, and it’s a claim that’s hard to argue, at least before this weekend: San Diego is the best college basketball city in America.

That’s without mentioning the University of San Diego, another Division I school, or Point Loma Nazarene, which boasts a top Division II basketball program, or San Diego City College, which is one of the best junior college programs in California. San Diego is known as a laid-back surfing town, when it’s really a big city brimming with and great at basketball.

“I don’t think we have to prove anything to them,” UCSD’s Hayden Gray said, referring to the bigger, more famous Michigan team they faced in the first round of the men’s NCAA tournament. “Teams don’t win 30 games by accident. We’re going to go out there with confidence and see if they can stop us.”

UCSD would ultimately lose to Michigan, which featured two ballyhooed seven-footers, after a would-be game-tying three rattled off the rim at the buzzer. Gray’s words are those that a proud city—a confident city—can live by.

Except no one cared. No one made the argument that San Diego is the best college basketball city in the country, and no one here cared that the city had four teams in the tournaments. National media mostly ignored the San Diego bids, besides patting the UCSD men’s team on the head and saying Aw, look at you trying. The St. John’s program has been irrelevant for all of my life, but this year on ESPN I’ve seen more clips of head coach Rick Pitino’s dyed hair plugs than actual basketball.

Locally, San Diego’s NCAA bids elicited a balkanized and almost indiscernible response. Some news hits on the local TV affiliates here. Some boosterish social media posts there. Local news outlets covered them. In real life, there was no buzz. There were no watch parties or lead-up hype or prideful and knowing nods towards strangers dressed in school colors. It’s standard fare to light up a civic building or skyscraper with the colors of a city’s teams, except, I guess, in San Diego. 

This past week, I asked several San Diegans what they thought about the city’s quad bids, and because no one had thoughts about it I asked why no one cares about San Diego’s quad bids. Almost to a person, the response was some version of “San Diego is too busy surfing.”

This is as lazy as it is ridiculous. La Jolla and Ocean, Mission, and Pacific Beaches, the neighborhoods with most of the city’s surf spots, are home to just 8% of the population. Most San Diegans live in denser and more urban communities east of the 5 and south of the 8 freeways. In 2019, a local nonprofit organized a trip to the beach via public transit for kids from City Heights. The 11-mile trip took an hour-and-a-half. For decades, Barrio Logan had been cut off from San Diego Bay despite sitting next to it. As for youth participation rates, over 2,000 boys and girls play high school basketball across 168 teams in the city of San Diego. Across the city’s 17 surf teams, there aren’t 200 participants.

Saying most San Diegans are too busy surfing is like saying most New Yorkers are too busy hanging out in Times Square. It’s by any metric inaccurate and dismissive. Perhaps I’m taking the insinuation too literally, that the idea of surfing, of laid-back hangs with suntanned friends, is really what people mean, but I can’t think of a worse idea than bobbing in freezing cold water with territorial white people.

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One friend’s response has stuck with me. “No one’s going to think we’re the best if we’re not saying it ourselves,” he said. It’s a higher order thought that makes me sad. 

More than any big city I’ve experienced, San Diego is preoccupied with what others think of it, rather than what it thinks of itself, which leads the city to try to appeal to everyone, which leads to banality and mediocrity. “America’s Finest City” is the nickname invented by former mayor Pete Wilson to obscure the local establishment bungling and ultimately losing the 1972 Republican National Convention to Miami. The “-est” is inherently a comparison, and aspiring to be “fine” reflects the city’s tired adherence to milquetoast suburbanism. 

I’ve written about another example in Snapdragon Stadium. We had a blank canvas for a world-class facility, but instead we built a cheap, multipurpose bowl surrounded by parking lots. It’s exactly what we had there before the Chargers vacated it for Los Angeles. It’s as if building a replica of Qualcomm Stadium would conjure some mid-century magic and wind the clocks back to when rampant greenfield development and Cold War defense spending made San Diego feel important. A friend from LA stabbed us in our inferiority complex and twisted the knife: “You’re obsessed with us, but we never think about you,” she said. Oof. 

The other side of that coin is a lack of vision. Proclaiming greatness, or striving for it, requires a suspension of disbelief. A better world is possible if we accept the possibility of a currently fictional world, and it’s risky to do that. It’s more comfortable to accept the familiar shitty public services and infrastructure and to tolerate the resorts that extract wealth and send it to multinational REITs incorporated in Delaware. 

An exception is Petco Park. The Padres market it as America’s No. 1 ballpark, and not coincidentally it has shown up in recent years at the top of ballpark rankings. It’s a Greatness Feedback Loop. The more the Padres call their home great, the more that outsiders consider it that way, and the more people think Petco Park is great, the more the Padres want to keep it that way. It is astonishing and refreshing to see someone, or something, in San Diego make an unqualified claim to greatness.

I don’t expect everyone to be sports or basketball fans, and that probably isn’t advisable. Sports are at the center of culture in Philadelphia and it is a deranged place. Big 5 partisans think Philly invented basketball and the Palestra is the only arena in the world and that it’s still 1955 when La Salle was the reigning national champion. Remind them that Villanova isn’t actually in the city and they stuff a soft pretzel in your mouth, throw you in the back of a van, and dump your body into the Schuylkill. 

It’s also a generalization for me to say that no one cares about college basketball in San Diego. SDSU’s and UCSD’s local alumni networks are massive, and any casual sports fan—or anyone with a pulse—can buy into a championship run. Whenever I’m in a funk thinking about, say, a president illegalling consolidating power or a major political party ceding the government to an unelected billionaire, I think back to the packed bar at which I watched Lamont Butler drain a buzzer beater in the Final Four. Limbs, as they say across the pond.

But for the first round of this year’s NCAA tournaments the Gaslamp should have been closed to cars for a watch/block party. The County Administration Building should have been lit up in alternating colors of blue and red. Fans should have been bussed to the tarmac at Lindbergh Field so local news cameras could get a clip of the teams being sent off in style. Employers should have relaxed their dress codes and encouraged school colors. The city should have hung basketball hoops on light posts. (I’m for anything that makes NIMBYs lose their minds.) None of that happened because San Diego doesn’t have a civic language or tradition that informs and enlists normies into something important/fun.

It’s a sentiment and history worth exploring more in a different piece, but a major reason is that we mistake climate for culture. Think of any major city or region and the first thought would be about people. London: keep calm and carry on. Midwest: friendly cheese-eaters. New York: assholes. Think of San Diego and you think of the weather. That’s in large part because the modern city1 was founded that way.

We had no water. We had no arable land. We had no oil. We had no precious metals. We had no mountain passes for trains. The bay was mostly unnavigable. So in the early 1900s local robber barons turned to tourism to stabilize San Diego’s economy.

“[John D. Spreckels] owned major tourist assets and appreciated the obvious business logic of moderate public investments in parks, beaches, and pageantry,” Mike Davis writes in Under the Perfect Sun. “At least while waiting for the satanic mills to arrive from the East, it made sense to package the climate for sale to a leisure class of wealthy retirees, consumptives, and cultists—all of whom might stay in Spreckel’s hotels and tent cities or buy lots adjacent to Spreckel’s streetcar lines.”

In essence, San Diego adopted—it was sold—a hollow identity. Weather is inanimate, and everywhere has it. It’s nothing distinctive. Culture, on the other hand, is human. One definition of culture is so beautiful I’m going to get it tattooed across my clavicles: “The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.”

Alumni and students hit the bars for the UCSD and SDSU games, of course, but that’s closer to networking than culture. The seeds of culture are Juan in accounting and Julie in marketing, hypothetical colleagues who rarely interact, realizing they can needle each other in good fun (i.e. bond) because, at the office on gameday, one wore a Tritons polo and the other wore an Aztecs shirt, even though neither of them can name a single player. San Diego is big enough for two research institutions with relevant athletics programs, and it should be big enough, and mature enough, to have a civic fabric that strangers can plug into and feel connected with the place and its people.

Last Sunday, San Diego became the only city to send four teams to the NCAA tournaments. In the ensuing three days, San Diego stood alone, and—brace yourself, Chamber of Commerce—it had nothing to do with the sun.

The other day, a friend sent me a video about Olympique de Marseille’s recent failures as a football club. A few hours later, a different friend sent me a video about gondolas, the aerial cable transit systems. My friends hate me. They forced me to think about Frank McCourt, who sucks the soul from two sports I l…

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As the Phillies stumbled their way through what became, somehow, a World Series season, I tried understanding why, amid a COVID era in which I managed an affordable housing campaign to a loss, subsequently struggled to land a job, developed anxiety, suffered my first panic attack, and experienced heartbreak, I cared and thought about the losingest franchise in United States sports history as passionately and as often as I did while growing up in South Jersey.

And unlike South Jersey Me, San Diego Me, the one in the trenches of adulthood, knows Major League Baseball is a commercialized behemoth comprised mostly of men and thinks every bad thing about society stems from MLB’s anti-trust exemption, which allows the league to skirt labor laws, impose television blackouts, and extort cities. At any one time, seemingly half of the owners, all of whom are billionaires, refuse to invest in their teams despite pocketing subsidies from their colleagues. The money I spend to watch and support the Phils, whose product is derived from the labor of players, enriches, say, the owner of the Miami Marlins, God help me.

Still I watch. Expressing either the last sane sentiment of the American conservative movement or an omen, George Will said, “[Baseball’s] a game that you can’t like if winning’s everything, and democracy is that way, too.” The amount of losing in baseball is staggering: Ted Williams failed six times out of ten in the greatest season ever for a hitter, and only once, in 1906, did a team lose less than a quarter of its games in a season, with those Chicago Cubs losing four times as much as the NBA’s all-time winningest team. Losing is the whole deal, making baseball similar to that Philly legend Rocky Balboa: you lose the title fight but win over Adrian by getting your ass kicked day in and day out and in the ring and out of it and still answering the bell. American democracy is that way, too.

The losses in our elections are small and large and local and systemic and occur ever year. Our system is predicated on accepting loss, which is why the emergence of Big Liars, election deniers, and insurrectionists have renewed a tradition of pronouncing the demise of American democracy. We’re still going to the polls, though, and more than ever. It’s because something in us knows trying is the point. That feeling and the institutions it props up are worth preserving.

The New York Times shoved these thoughts into my brain when, on May 21, 2022, it informed me that both “Ginni Thomas Urged Arizona Lawmakers to Overturn Election” and “Roger Angell, Who Wrote About Baseball With Passion, Dies at 101.” The latter was the good news, since it profiled a literary man who, despite experiencing the Great Depression and World War II and rooting for the New York Mets, gave the world this:

“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives.”

On its face, Angell’s quote conjures a nostalgia for a past that never really existed and misses the mark on no one “caring deeply and passionately” anymore. Forty-six years after Angell wrote that for the New Yorker, in an analysis of the “epochal” 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, Donald Trump directed an army of zealots to attempt a coup.

The drift toward illiberalism and the shock of insurrection revived centuries-old prophecies. “The will of a majority is the will of a rabble,” John C. Calhoun had said. “Progressive democracy is incompatible with liberty." Calhoun was the Southern, pro-slavery statesman who, while serving as vice president in 1832, threw the young country into chaos by pushing “nullification,” a legal theory under which states could deem federal law null and void. In These Truths, Jill Lepore wrote, “The nullification crisis was … a debate about the limits of states’ rights and about the question of slavery, an early augur of the civil war to come.” Almost two hundred years later, the Times published an investigative series titled “Democracy Challenged.”

Baseball fans know this tradition well. “The rage for base ball [sic] appears to be dying out,” the Omaha World-Herald observed in 1890, eleven years before the establishment of the American League. In December 2022, the Michigan Journal of Economics asked, “Is Baseball a ‘Dying’ Sport?”

Baseball’s death notices usually focus on the game’s finances and viewership or its aesthetics and cultural significance, but to me baseball’s survival is tied not to dollars and eyeballs but rather to politics, and I worry about the game in today’s environment. It’s not that Major League Baseball will go away in an increasingly illiberal America. It’s that the league’s owners will curry favor with neoconservative overlords, who, by changing election law and interpreting them to their advantage, will permanently entrench themselves in power. The owners have long done this (their anti-trust exemption was awarded by a sympathetic Supreme Court in 1922), but in this possible future their extortion efforts will become more brazen, their labor practices more exploitative, and their game product more divorced from the profits they make and the desires of their customer bases. As it always has, baseball would then reflect the country: ignorant of popular sentiment and determined by contrived results. MLB would then be a tool of the state to enrich oligarchs who stand by as fascism creeps towards us fans.

This is not fantasy. In profiling Roman Abramovich, journalist Catherine Belton outlined how Russian President Vladimir Putin infiltrated British society and government through sports. Belton concluded Putin ordered Abramovich, obscenely wealthy from his controlling companies once owned by the Soviet state, to purchase the Chelsea Football Club because “Putin’s Kremlin had accurately calculated that the way to gain acceptance in British society was through the country’s greatest love, its national sport.” Since the invasion of Ukraine, most of Europe has strained to disentangle itself from Putin’s Russia. Belton wondered if “England has been too compromised by Russian money to do so.” In the States, MLB team owners contributed to the G.O.P. over the Democratic Party at a nearly 3-to-1 rate from 2016 to 2020, with owners of the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Chicago Cubs contributing directly to the Trump campaign and Trump-aligned political action committees in the 2020 election cycle. After losing that election, Trump organized his shock troops to overturn the results.

I sense that, through baseball fifty years ago, Roger Angell recognized this cynicism that has since metastasized. His lament for the extinction of caring is really his fear of an intolerance of losing—losing money, relationships, games, elections, whatever—for in losing lies truth and in truth lies freedom, as they say, but in all of it lies pain, or the potential of it. If there is anything that will at long last kill American democracy and in turn baseball, then it is our not wanting anymore to be Rocky Balboa: a nobody willing to lose for the ties that bind.

“It’s telling that this whole framework is fundamentally oriented toward history,” Emma Baccalieri wrote for Sports Illustrated. “If baseball is dying now, it must have been alive then. It’s all very sentimental.” It’s a retrograde perspective borrowed from America, whose Founding Fathers nobly conceived and then handed off the Greatest Country on Earth, only for us forebears to turn in botch jobs. Standing in for George Washington, etc. is baseball's first class of players inducted into the Hall of Fame. It just hasn’t been the same since Ty Cobb batted a career .366 against seven all-White teams of dairy farmers and steamfitters.

“How does baseball live?” Baccalieri continued, “offers more to examine, structurally and personally, than does Why must baseball die?” The former question feels like identifying an optical illusion, a thing so obvious that I wondered why my brain didn’t notice it in the first place, and reorients the perspective to the future, although that future feels a little barren. It’s not bad, per se, just unarticulated. What’s the vision for baseball? What do we want baseball to look like five, twenty, fifty years from now? Who do we want to have access to the game, and how do we want them to do it? Who’s ‘we’? Still, none of these questions address why I even care.

First, baseball’s fun. In the pivotal third game of last year’s National League Division Series, the Atlanta Braves pitched the league’s leading The Thing impersonator and the N.L. Rookie of the Year runner-up Spencer Strider. He submitted two typically dominant innings, but then in the third the Phillies tallied five hits on five consecutive pitches, including a Bryce Bomb that landed two seats to my left. When Strider walked back to the dugout, relieved of his duties mid-inning, 45,000 Philadelphians troll-chanted his name, and in that moment I ceased to exist as an individual, serving only as one cell in a delirious mass, and my entire world had collapsed at Citizens Bank Park into an image, now frozen in my mind, of what it means to believe in and belong to something mystical, which is to say it was an image of how fun it is to beat someone in a game. To quote Nancy Pelosi, I don’t hate anybody, but that was the closest I’ve ever felt to salvation. (At 6:46 a.m. on the Monday after returning to San Diego, I texted my buddy back home with whom I attended the NLDS. “STOTTY,” I said, still buzzing from his nine-pitch at-bat that initiated the rally. My friend responded with a screenshot of a text I allegedly sent a month prior, on September 25. “Stott sucks and I’m over him,” it read. Bryson Stott and I had both come a long way.)

On the other side of that coin are the rationalizations both embodied by and included in baseball that inure me to the mountains of losses in the sport and democracy and life. The 99-loss 2015 Phillies had to walk so a future team—the 2022 team, it turned out—could run; the authoritarian impulses of the far-right is just a phase; and one day I’ll be and feel fine. These are my subconscious defenses against nihilism and what makes it seem like there’s a point to everyday pain. To put it in baseball terms, I need to know there’s always next year. I think that’s why American democracy still exists.

Written constitutions around the world have lasted, on average, seventeen years, as Jill Lepore pointed out in the New Yorker. The U.S.'s turns 234 this year (and by my last count baseball still has 234 fans). Lepore characterizes the U.S. Constitution today as brittle, considering it is virtually unamendable anymore, but it must also possess a resiliency to survive this long. That resiliency comes from us, for institutions take on the characteristics of the humans that make and sustain them. There is nothing inevitable about American democracy (or baseball). Its death is not a certainty, and that’s because people like me tell themselves the essential little lies—we need each other, it gets better, and it’s worth fighting for—to avoid being swallowed by what’s at the core of the Big Lie: that nothing matters, including how we treat people.

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On this weekend last year, I posted the political guide to the 2025 MLB season and wrote this in the intro:

Donald Trump is running the country by fiat, Elon Musk has my Social Security Number, and the Philadelphia Eagles started a dynasty against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 59. This means it is finally baseball season.

It’s amazing how quickly things change. The Eagles do not own a dynasty, for they haven’t completed a forward pass since that Super Bowl. DOGE blew up on launch, like most of Musk’s actual rockets. And, after a disastrous federal occupation of Minneapolis, Congressional Democrats were able to wrangle the votes to impeach Donald Trump and remove him from office.

[puts hand to earpiece]

Wait.

[listens intently]

Yes, okay. I’m receiving reports that Congressional Democrats have done next to nothing to stop the Trump administration’s attacks on democracy, civil liberties, and separations of power, let alone enact an agenda that helps non-rich people. I’m sorry for the confusion. Some things, in fact, do not change.

Thank God baseball is one of them. It’s February, and so pitchers and catchers have reported and soon we will be at the ballpark drinking cans of Bud Light the size of grenade launchers. So badly do I miss baseball that I watched a video of Philadelphia Phillies ace Zack Wheeler leisurely warming up, if it can be called that, dozens of times.

There are plenty of power rankings out in the world, and they will all say the same thing: The good teams will be good, the bad teams will be bad. But there is only one political guide to the baseball season. It is here at Out in Left.

Baseball is the sport that most reflects every day life, so the best way to understand the upcoming season is through politics. As I did last season, I ask a question about (almost) every team that I think you, the reader, would ask to get caught up.

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N.L. East

Are the Philadelphia Phillies the most MAGA team in baseball?

In 2022, catcher J.T. Realmuto, pitcher Aaron Nola, and infielder Alec Bohm couldn’t travel with the team to Toronto because they failed to meet Canada’s vaccine requirements. First baseman Bryce Harper drinks raw milk, and this offseason he received an unapproved blood treatment from a quack doctor. Shortstop Trea Turner wants to meet Elon Musk. I count no less than six players on the roster from either Florida or Georgia (with several others from Louisiana, Indiana, and the Carolinas.) Finally, during their run to the 2022 World Series, the team chose as its rally song Calum Scott’s far inferior version of “Dancing On My Own.” Robyn should have sued for damages. Will the Phillies aging roster contend for the World Series? I have no idea, but I do know how they’ll be voting at the midterms.

What craven thing did New York Mets owner Steve Cohen do this time?

Honestly, nothing really. Last year, Cohen publicly bashed club legend Pete Alonso during contract negotiations in attempt to gain leverage, but this offseason baseball’s single-richest owner has been on his best behavior. Maybe he wanted no drama while New York considered his $8 billion casino project at Citi Field. Maybe he is still smarting from the Mets epic second-half collapse. Maybe he was hiding from scrutiny for letting Alonso and closer Edwin Diaz walk. In any case, I’m looking forward to the Mets coming up short again.

How much does Miami still owe for the Marlins ballpark?

In 2009, then-Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria convinced public authorities to fund most of the cost of a $634 million ballpark. Thanks to interest, the total hit to Miami taxpayers is estimated at $2.4 billion. The first payment is scheduled this year. The last is scheduled for 2049. Loria sold the Marlins in 2017 for $1.2 billion. The Marlins unironically call their ballpark loanDepot Field. The team stinks.

I will be able to copy-paste the above blurb for the next 23 years and it will be accurate. Indeed, I copy-pasted it from last year’s season preview.

Why have the Atlanta Braves been so quiet?

In 2021, the Braves won the World Series, and in the ensuing years they signed the following young players to expensive, long-term deals:

• Austin Riley, 3B

• Matt Olsen, 1B

• Spencer Strider, SP

• Ronald Acuña Jr., RF

• Sean Murphy, C

• Michael Harris, CF

• Ozzie Albies, 2B

They formed a core that won more than 100 games in both 2022 and 2023, but the Braves have underwhelmed since. They even finished below the Marlins last year. Most of the aforementioned players have either have been hurt or have underperformed, exposing the risk of the Braves’ payroll gamble. They don’t really have roster flexibility, so they’ve nibbled around the edges and swung some trades, to varying levels of success.

Oh, and the team’s owner, Liberty Media, spent over $3 million on campaign contributions in 2024, nearly all of it going to Republicans. Why field a winning ball club when you can “buy” illogical trade restrictions, net-zero immigration, and incompetent governance?

Years after trading away Trea Turner, Max Scherzer, and Juan Soto, the Washington Nationals are finally ready to emerge from their rebuild, right? Right???

(Here’s a great video summarizing the plight of the Nationals.)

N.L. Central

Why did the Milwaukee Brewers trade their best pitcher?

Freddy Peralta posted 2.70 ERA last season across 33 starts, cementing him as one of the game’s best starting pitchers. The Brewers, coming off a 97-win season and with a solid core intact, traded him to the Mets. Competitively, it makes no sense, but this is American sports we’re talking about. Winning doesn’t matter. Peralta is due $8 million in 2026, then he’s a free agent. It’s particularly frustrating because, in 2023, Wisconsin committed $500 million to improve the Brewers’ ballpark. Taxpayers are subsidizing the Brewers’ stinginess.

Will you beat up on the Chicago Cubs owner again?

Yes. The New Yorker called Cubs owner Todd Ricketts the president’s “fundraiser-in-chief,” and it came out in April that the Ricketts family spent $1.6 million on Trump’s 2024 inauguration. Since then, ICE agents descended on Chicago, leaving lasting impact on the city and its immigrant communities. While federal agents patrolled the streets, ICE broadcasted recruitment ads, including, according to intrepid Redditors, on Marquee Sports Network during Cubs games. Half of Marquee is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, an arch-conservative conglomerate. The other half is owned by the Cubs. Am I alleging that, through the ICE ads, Ricketts received a kickback paid with taxpayer funds? No, not at all.

Did the Cincinnati Reds just get a new owner?

This week, MLB owners approved the transfer of the Reds from Bob Castellini to his son, Phil. (Don’t let anyone tell you that the U.S. isn’t a meritocracy.) In 2022, Phil infamously said “Well, where are you gonna go?” in response to fans complaining about the team trading away its best players. He followed that up the next year by bemoaning guaranteed contracts in baseball. The team will never win anything while the Castellini’s are in charge.

What is there to say about St. Louis Cardinals?

Not much. The Cards traded away their best players, and their owner is seeking subsidies for stadium renovations and calling for a salary cap. Standard fare.

Are the Pittsburgh Pirates actually trying?

Well, in signing first baseman Ryan O’Hearn, the Pirates did ink their first multi-year free agency deal since Barack Obama was president. They also tried to sign several top free agents, including the Phillies’ designated hitter Kyle Schwarber, and the team made some solid trades. ’s newsletter thinks the Pirates are contenders in the weak N.L. Central. It’s easy to be jaded, what with team owner Rob Nutting being among the worst owners in American sports, but I’m down for some Postseason Pirates.

N.L. West

Are the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team that forcibly removed a Mexican-American community from Chavez Ravine to build their stadium and a team supported by millions of people of color and a team that employs many immigrants — superstar Shohei Ohtani being one of them —actually going to the White House to commemorate their World Series victory with Donald Trump?

Yes.

What have the San Diego Padres been up to lately?

In the past year or so, the team has:

• Opposed a minimum wage increase in San Diego;

• Opposed the increase of public parking rates, a move meant to close budget holes and avoid slashing public services;

• Privatized the management of public streets near Petco Park;

• Increased season tickets prices by 7%, on average, marking the fifth straight year of increases;

• Announced the team is for sale, which will almost certainly net the owners billions (a few decades ago, the Padres could have been a public asset); and

• Amid ownership uncertainty, refuse to give president of baseball operations A.J. Preller a new contract.

Preller, of course, is the man responsible for the Padres current golden era. But why let competitiveness and the well-being of your fans get in the way of making money?

Is San Francisco Giants chairman Greg Johnson one of the few in baseball who isn’t crying about the Dodgers?

Yes, thankfully. In the NLDS, the Phillies outscored the Dodgers, had more hits and home runs, posted a lower ERA, and, until the very last play of the series, committed fewer errors. The Dodgers won the series 3-1. The Toronto Blue Jays took the Dodgers to seven games in the World Series, and they could have won the championship, like, 37 different times, if not for bad luck and insane plays. We do not need to change the rules for the Dodgers, and a salary cap will not bring about parity.

Last year, you said the Arizona state legislature was on the verge of allocating tens of millions of dollars to renovate Chase Field at the behest of the Diamondbacks owner. Did that come to fruition?

Yes, but I misspoke. It turned out to be hundreds of millions, not tens of millions. $500 million, to be exact. There’s nothing like taxpayers footing the bill for a new roof and HVAC system to ensure your team finishes in fourth place in their division every year.

Why do the Colorado Rockies exist?

I don’t know, but to be fair: Coors Field is criminally underrated, Rockies fans show up even when their team stinks, as it will this year, and owner Dick Monfort isn’t afraid to spend money. Now, he might spend it terribly, but it’s something.

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Intermission

Dodgers fans can have their free agents and their World Series. I will always have this:

A.L. East

How do the Toronto Blue Jays recover from losing what was arguably the greatest World Series ever?

By reimposing vaccine mandates.

Did New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner cry poor AGAIN this offseason?

Yes. Last year, Steinbrenner said, "It's difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things that [the Dodgers are] doing. Payrolls at levels we’re at right now are simply not sustainable for us financially.”

After the season, Steinbrenner said, “Everybody wants to talk about revenues. They need to talk about our expenses, including the $100 million expense to the city of New York that we have to pay every Feb. 1, including the COVID year. It all starts to add up in a hurry.” (For the record, that payment to the city is for rent, because the Yankees got taxpayers to pay for their mausoleum of a ballpark.)

The Yankees are worth over $7 billion, and in 2024 they generated a record $412 million in ticket sales. That’s just one of their revenue streams. And yet, this year, they’re running back the same team. As I said last year, Steinbrenner being cheap is far worse for baseball than the Dodgers paying for good players. I will die on this hill.

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Can you remind me of the incompetence of the Boston Red Sox?

Happily. In 2020, the Sox traded a prime Mookie Betts because they didn't want to resign him to a long-term deal. Betts has since won two World Series with the Dodgers and is playing himself into Hall of Fame contention. The last vestige of that trade, catcher Connor Wong, posted a -0.6 bWAR last season for the Sox.

In 2023, the Sox signed third baseman Rafael Devers to a mega-contract. Two years later, they signed third baseman Alex Bregman to a mega-contract. Team executives leaked to the media a bunch of garbage about Devers after he, understandably, refused to change his position to accommodate Bregman. The Sox then traded Devers to the Giants, getting almost nothing in return because they offloaded the entire contract onto San Francisco. The Sox missed the playoffs.

In the offseason, Bergman opted out of his deal and signed with the Cubs. The Sox’ hopes for the playoffs in 2026 now rests on a bunch of rookies, when they could have had a lineup featuring Betts, Devers, and Bregman. Nice work.

Was ultra-billionaire and Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein named in the Epstein Files?

Yes.

What’s the latest on Tampa Bay Rays ballpark saga?

In 2024, Hurricane Milton ravaged the Tampa area and significantly damaged the Rays’ Tropicana Field. It threw a wrench into the Rays’ plans for a new ballpark—local jurisdictions could no longer afford to subsidize a new facility—and it ultimately led to the sale of the team to billionaire developer Patrick Zalupski.

Last week, we got renderings for yet another iteration of a new Rays ballpark. To make it come to fruition, the team is asking public authorities for a mere $2.25 billion in taxpayer subsidies. Local elected officials are considering raiding a community infrastructure fund to make it happen. In the meantime, the Rays’ return to the moribund Tropicana Field.

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A.L. Central

Did the Detroit Tigers, with MLB’s concurrence, try to lowball all-world starting pitcher Tarik Skubal in salary arbitration, but instead stepped on a rake and set a precedent that could lead to players getting paid more?

Yes.

Do I need to know anything about the rest of the teams in this division?

No.

A.L. West

Did you forget to include the Seattle Mariners in your preview last year?

Yes. I will make up for it by not saying anything poorly about the team or its management and by linking to a 40-minute compilation of their late-inning magic last season.

Are the Houston Astros cheaters?

Forever and always.

Are the Texas Rangers still the only MLB team that doesn’t celebrate the LGBTQ community?

Yes.

What’s the latest on the [redacted] Athletics?

The Athletics’ departure from Oakland and its residency in West Sacramento are disgraceful episodes in MLB history. I went to a game at Sutter Health Park and it’s simply an unserious operation. That said, the Athletics signed much of its young, exciting core to long-term deals, and the club’s ballpark in Las Vegas is under construction. I won’t be upset watching Nick Kurtz hit bombs into the MGM Grand marquee.

The Anaheim Angeles are a dumpster fire.

That’s not a question, but I agree. Here’s a list of recent key events:

• 2019 - Mike Trout has his last great season.

• 2020 - the team signs third baseman Anthony Rendon, which would become one of, if not the worst contract in North American sports history.

• 2021 - Albert Pujols’ 10-year, $210-million contract elapses. The team would make the playoffs just once in his tenure.

• 2022 - the team gets ensnarled in an FBI investigation involving the redevelopment of the Angels’ ballpark site.

• 2023 - Shohei Ohtani’s contract elapses, ensuring the Angels waste the labor of probably the most talented baseball player to ever live.

• 2024 - Angels hire veteran manager Ron Washington, who would later require heart surgery and end his tenure prematurely.

• 2025 - they finish last in the AL West, then hire Kurt Suzuki as their new manager, though on a peculiar one-year deal.

Arte Moreno needs to sell the team.

Tyrese Maxey is a superstar. Joel Embiid has figured out how to maintain elite production without possessing knee ligaments. Rookie guard V.J. Edgecombe has been a revelation. They’re starring for a team bound for the playoffs. And yet, the Philadelphia 76ers got worse on purpose at this week’s NBA’s trade dead…

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On Saturday, January 24, federal agents killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The following Tuesday, commissioners from five major sports leagues were scheduled to appear alongside President Donald T…

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Last week, the Professional Hockey Players Association formalized a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with hockey’s minor leagues. A two-day strike had brought negotiations to a head.

The WNBA and its players union have been negotiating a new CBA for months. The two sides are at a bitter impasse, w…

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In the four months since I moved to Paris, I’ve written three short stories,1 a poem, several other assignments for my MFA program, and dozens of pieces in the Substack-verse. It has amounted to 50,000 words. To quote Happy Gilmore, my fingers hurt.

I co…

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The funniest TV show I watched this year was the FIFA 2026 World Cup Draw. I howled, I cringed, I winced, I paused the show several times to collect myself. But for nearly the whole time, I laughed. It was an awkward debacle, with everyone involved trying to keep the seams from bursting. Comedy ensued.

Football federations have tur…

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The headline of this publication’s best-read piece, “Can we all just admit that MLS is terrible?”, sums up my position on Major League Soccer. The quality of play is poor. The regular season means nothing. Rosters rules make building dynasties and attracting and retaining elite talent near-impossible. It’s all just…

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The family that controls the San Diego Padres announced this week that they’re exploring a sale of the team. The Seidlers and their co-investors will make billions—billions that, except for the intervention of monopolists in 1990, could have existed in the public trust in perpetuity.

Ray Kro…

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I want to be George Saunders when I grow up.

He is arguably the greatest living American short story writer, and he is certainly one of the all-time greats. I am not yet either of those things.

With , he has reconceptualized the idea of the public intellectual. I am known, a little bit, for complaining about sports league governance.

By all accounts, Saunders is warm, kind, and generous. I’m working on those.

And he is America’s most incisive political observer and commentator.

I was reminded of the latter fact this week after I returned to his short story “Love Letter,” which takes the form of a letter and is set in a near-future America in which an increasingly authoritarian government threatens democracy and civil liberties. A man, the letter writer, advises his grandson to tread lightly in his opposition to the government. At the same time, “G.Pa” encourages his grandson to keep up the fight and even offers financial assistance to that end.

Like all great stories, it captures the paradoxical and complex nature of blah blah blah. You just have to read it.

I thought of “Love Letter” because I started writing a story that takes the form of a letter and I am a mere mortal. As the saying goes: good artists copy, but great artists steal. And I was scheduled to attend a writing retreat at L’abbaye de Royaumont outside of Paris. I would have plenty of time to draft what Saunders had inspired. (You, too, can have this life. All you have to do is sacrifice your career and nearly all your income and move away from everyone you know.)

I did not mean for my rereading of “Love Letter” to correspond with Election Day on Tuesday. Zohran Mamdani and a cavalcade of Democrats stopped, for a moment, the U.S.’s backsliding into illiberal democracy and instilled, for the first time in a long time, a sense of political hope. This is, perhaps, the flickering light to which G.Pa refers when he writes in his letter, “In this, you are, and I am, I hope, like cave people, sheltering a small, remaining trace of fire through a dark period.”

One of the many amazing things about “Love Letter” is that Saunders submitted it to the New Yorker in February 2020 (and it was published the following month). Meaning, Saunders wrote it before the outbreak of Covid-19, before the January 6th insurrection, and many years before the second Trump administration, which treats liberties and the rule of law like how its leader treats classified documents.

There is no “better” example of this than recent immigration raids, a disgraceful policy that has stained my country’s history. “Love Letter” anticipated this. “Where is J. now? Do you know? State facility or fed? That may matter,” Saunders writes through the voice of G.Pa. “I expect ‘they’ (loyalists) would (with the power of the courts now behind them) say that although J. is a citizen, she forfeited certain rights and privileges by declining to offer the requested info on G. & M.”

It’s easy to say Saunders predicted the raids. I think a truer, more insightful way to think about it is Saunders sensed that there was a capacity and ability for the government to disappear people, and that capacity and ability didn’t lie within a pathological man. Trump, or any leader, real or imagined, is not named in the story. Rather, that capacity and ability lied—(lies?)—within the national character, within us.

Saunders gets at this notion when G.Pa defends his own little acts of rebellion to creeping authoritarianism. It’s a passage worth quoting in full:

What would you have had me do? What would you have done? I know what you will say: you would have fought. But how? How would you have fought? Would you have called your senator? (In those days, you could still, at least, record your feeble message on a senator’s answering machine without reprisal, but you might as well have been singing or whistling or passing wind into it for all the good it did.) Well, we did that. We called, we wrote letters. Would you have given money to certain people running for office? We did that as well. Would you have marched? For some reason, there were suddenly no marches. Organized a march? Then and now, I did not and do not know how to arrange a march. I was still working full time. This dental thing had just begun. That rather occupies the mind. You know where we live: would you have had me go down to Waterville and harangue the officials there? They were all in agreement with us. At that time. Would you have armed yourself? I would not and will not, and I do not believe you would, either. I hope not. By that, all is lost.

Coursing through G.Pa’s plea is a complicity, and that implies something intentional, which reflects the binary way in which we often frame politics. The problem with Democrats is…

But G.Pa also expresses doubt, ignorance, confusion, pride, comfort, dread, hope, effort, exhaustion, etc, etc. This reflects how life and in turn politics actually are. It’s… complicated. We describe relationships like that because it’s rarely ever one thing, and we sometimes don’t have the tools, experience, or skills to understand or intervene.

In effect, Saunders tells the reader that the Democrats’ problem (or the problem with any political thing) is unknowable and that anyone who claims to know is full of shit. The only thing we can know and control is how we treat others. I mean this in the most mundane and banal and uninteresting way possible. Our politics flow from tiny interpersonal moments, and it’s at that those headwaters that Saunders has long held up the mirror:

• How do coworkers, whose jobs are to kill raccoons, treat each other? (“The 400-Pound CEO,” 1994)

• How do neighbors—one pathetic, one narcissistic, and two others drowning—treat each other? (“The Falls,” 1996)

• How do coworkers, whose jobs are to imitate cavemen, treat each other? (“Pastoralia,” 2000)

• How do prisoners, injected with drugs like Verbaluce™, treat each other? (“Escape from Spiderhead,” 2010) (Skip the Netflix movie version, though.)

None of these stories are about politics, but they evoke the political by focusing intensely on the interactions of people. Conversely, “Love Letter” is about politics, but it evokes the personal because it focuses on the relationship between grandfather and grandson. In either construct, Saunders doesn’t pretend to know what the problem is. On the page, he doesn’t wag or point his finger at some perceived issue in real life. All he knows is how these characters interact with one another in this story. Setting: whatever. Plot: who needs it? Theme: bor-ing! The specificity in (fake) Americans is what makes his writing electric and funny and politically relevant, prescient, and timeless.

Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Saunders wrote a journalistic essay for the New Yorker called, “Who Are All These Trump Supporters?” It is, to me, a classic piece of political reporting, and it still holds up because of the Saundersian specificity.

As Saunders reports, a man from Vermont claims “illegals” are getting all the kitchen jobs, but the man cannot say he knows this for a fact.

A woman from Minnesota, laid off from an executive administration job, complains that “these people, that are from other countries” are getting all the government benefits, but she can’t say for certain that those receiving benefits are illegal immigrants.

“Bill Davis, a funny, genial sales rep in the packaging industry, has nothing against legal immigration but feels that illegal immigration is ‘killing’ the area in Southern California where he lives,” Saunders writes. But Davis offers as proof only conjecture, generalizations, and non sequiturs.

In trying to separate Trump supporters from a perceived Other, Saunders starts asking his interviewees to respond to real, contemporaneous stories—a Dreamer named Noemi facing deportation, a Central American family split up by the government at the border. “In the face of specificity, my interviewees began trying, really trying, to think of what would be fairest and most humane for this real person we had imaginatively conjured up,” Saunders writes:

It wasn’t that we suddenly agreed, but the tone changed. We popped briefly out of zinger mode and began to have some faith in one another, a shared confidence that if we talked long enough, respectfully enough, a solution could be found that might satisfy our respective best notions of who we were.

Then the conversation would drift and everyone would retreat to their ideological foxholes.

After offensive comments or tragic events, rebutting politicians have a tendency of saying, “This is not who we are.” Saunders, in both his fiction and nonfiction, suggests, “Actually, this is exactly who we are. We are doing/have done [fill in the blank].”

Mamdani, for example, delivered in his victory speech a powerful and compelling message about immigrants’ enduring place in New York City. It is factually correct that New York (and the U.S.) would be nothing without immigrants. But is it true that New York City’s immigration history and potential future reflects who we are? As far back as 1790, the U.S. based naturalized citizenship on race, to speak nothing of the institution of slavery. Today, 250 years later, the U.S. is at zero migration on purpose. I’m sure the residents on W. 108th Street in Manhattan between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, who voted two-to-one for Mamdani, agree that that is not who we are! That didn’t stop many in the neighborhood from vehemently opposing, for over a decade, the conversion of a derelict parking garage into affordable housing.

So what do we do with this idea, the specificity of who we are? It’d be trite and not at all like me to suggest that if we were just kinder to each other, then the world (and our politics) would be better (though, they would be). It’d be more like me to blame a billionaire sports team owner. In any event, Saunders again points the way.

In A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, Saunders’ masterclass on the short story, the word “change” appears no fewer than 101 times. That’s what a story is: something happened, which is to say something changed. But a reader can’t know a change happened—they can’t know a story is being told—if they don’t know the original state, the status quo.

And readers aren’t stupid. Deceptions, generalizations, implausibilities, and even lies that the writer relies on won’t sneak past the bullshit detector. “Many young writers start out with the idea that a story is a place to express their views—to tell the world what they believe,” Saunders writes:

That is, they understand the story as a delivery system for their ideas. I know I felt that way. A story was where I got to set the world straight and achieve glory via the sheer originality of my advanced moral positions. But, as a technical matter, fiction doesn’t support polemic very well. Because the writer invents all the elements, a story isn’t really in a position to “prove” anything.

Storytelling is essential to politics. Storytelling is political. In this context, then, us Americans lie to ourselves about the status quo. We want to get to the end of the story, where we’re a better version of ourselves, whatever we believe that looks like, without facing the facts of who we are today and who we were yesterday and the day before that.

We boast that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants. We also vilify them and, now, effectively ban them. How can we know who we are in this respect when we have never reconciled that tension? Even Obama, who trumpeted the storytelling tenets of hope and change, was careful not to articulate too specifically what he hoped to see change. He (in)famously hedged on same-sex marriage, for instance.

I interpret this as a fear to confront who we are in the specific instances in which we interact with others. We are, above all, an insecure people, and for as long as we are insecure we will whiplash between this visionary Democrat and that retrograde Conservative (or vice versa) in a fruitless attempt to fulfill ourselves.

Saunders’ work suggests that the acceptance and security that we so desperately grasp at can only be found from within each one of us, in the trustful hope that others will share in that grace. “Love Letter” is not a polemic. The title of the story is not ironic.

“I want you well. I want you someday to be an old fart yourself, writing a (too) long letter to a (beloved) grandson,” G.Pa/Saunders writes. “In this world, we speak much of courage and not, I feel, enough about discretion and caution. I know how that will sound to you. Let it be. I have lived this long and have the right.”

In that sentiment, expressed between two normal, hopeful, scared Americans, exists all of life. What could be more political than that?

Before you go…

I started a new Substack, one about French football.

Check it out below, and subscribe if interested!

Ligue Huh?

Announcing 'Ligue Huh?': the English-language source for French football news

France’s Ligue 1 is considered one of Europe’s “Big Five” football leagues, along with the English Premier League, the German Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga, and Italy’s Serie A. But a better name for the group might be “Big Four-plus-One." The French top flight is, without question, the runt…

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7 months ago · 1 like · Brendan Dentino