Beautiful Loser – by Dave Pell

There’s an old saying that no one ever remembers who finished second. It’s even more likely that no one will remember who finished next to last. There’s probably no worse fate in sports than being the second-worst team of all time. Which brings us to the 2024 Chicago White Sox. The team has lost 120 games this season, and their next loss, assuming they realize what should now be considered a goal, will make them the losingest MLB team of the modern era. My San Francisco Giants have hovered around .500 all season. How boring. How utterly forgettable. Up until their elimination from playoff contention, I watched nearly every inning of every game. Commentators Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper, Dave Flemming, and Jon Miller are the soundtrack to my life. And yet, after those endless hours of devotion, I will remember nothing about this mediocre season (except for the fact that this was the year we got cushions on our seats at Oracle Park). White Sox fans will never forget 2024. And so today we begin a pastime that is as American as baseball: hitting down. All baseball fans, even those as disappointed with our seasons as I am, can look down on the lowly Chicago White Sox. At least until they lose another game, and then those of us stuck in the land of half-wins and half-losses might feel a little jealous. At least that much losing is funny. Will Leitch in NY magazine: The Beauty of the White Sox’ Historically Abominable Season. “It makes sense to focus on successful teams: Winning is, after all, the goal of every game, the reason we have scoreboards in the first place. But we remember the truly great teams far more than we remember the run-of-the-mill champions: Being the best at something makes you immortal. So it makes sense that being the best at losing is also eternal. Do you know who won the World Series in 1962? Do you even care? The only thing that sticks from that year is the awfulness of the Mets. Besides being more memorable, losing is more recognizable and far more familiar than winning. Only a select few of us will ever understand what it’s like to be revered, to have tens of thousands of people chant our name. But doing our best and coming up short? Being beaten by a superior? Things that don’t work? We all know That feeling.”

+ Sam Anderson in the News from the New York Times (Gift item): How Does a Baseball Team Lose 120 Games? All the Ways You Can Think. “I walked into Section 108, notebook in hand, like a zoologist documenting the last frog pond in the rainforest. I wanted to know many things. What does it feel like to witness so much loss up close? How could everything go so wrong? And why on earth would anyone pay to see it? ‘It’s a mental illness,’ (a fan named) Beefloaf said succinctly.”

+ ESPN: Chicago White Sox use humor to report recent losses. It’s funny now. But if the White Sox stop losing games, nobody’s going to be laughing. So go out there and give ’em hell, boys. And White Sox fans, heed the words of baseball’s most quotable philosopher, Yogi Berra: “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”

On TV and in movies, we tend to glorify the mafia. Well, fuggetaboutit. In real life, if you’re looking for someone to celebrate, think of a man who has dedicated his life to fighting the mafia and running a covert operation that frees women from the criminal underworld. DT Max in The New Yorker: The priest who helps women escape from the crowd“To help such women, Ciotti, who is 79, has spent the past two decades building an informal network of safe houses, burner phones and cooperating police officers. When he needs an agent or government official to help someone escape, he often makes the request in person, avoiding phone logs or digital trails.”

“It was the perfect New York hustle, a scam of subtle perfection. And for three years, it helped Mark Epperson pay his rent. The hustle, at its simplest: Borrow a Citi Bike. Ride it one block. Wait 15 minutes, then ride back.” News from the New York Times (Gift item): The Scammers Making $6,000 a Month Gaming Citi Bikes. “By 10:14 a.m., the crew had created an algorithmically perfect situation: one station 100 percent full, a short block from another station 100 percent empty. The timing was critical, because every 15 minutes, Lyft’s algorithm resets, assigning new point values ​​to each bike movement. The clock struck 10:15 a.m. The algorithm, mistaking this manufactured setup for a real emergency, offered the maximum incentive: $4.80 for each bike returned to the Ed Sullivan Theater. The men reversed direction, running east and biking west.”

“If your phone says ‘5G,’ you’re not necessarily connected to the latest, fastest mobile network technology. It could just mean that there are 5G connections available nearby. And the bars are a mobile version of a shrug. There’s no standard measure of signal strength that each bar represents.” Shira Ovide in WaPo: Your phone’s ‘5G’ icon and signal bars are lying to you.

Alef Wedde: “The Israeli military said the airstrike on the Lebanese capital killed Ibrahim Qubaisi, who the military said the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile force.” Israel has decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and disrupted its communications. The bet seems to be that they can quickly stop the terror group from firing rockets into Israel and that Iran will not want to start a wider war. WaPo’s David Ignatius is not very optimistic: Sadness and fear as Lebanon’s next war approaches“It’s like watching people trapped as a violent hurricane approaches. Every time you hope they can escape and avert disaster. But too often they can’t.” Meanwhile, the U.S. send troops to be ready to assist in the evacuation of American citizens from Lebanon. Here’s the latest from CNN.

+ Divided nations: “I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and respond with despair. But not me. I will not do it.” Biden notes “remarkable historical turn” in his last address to the United Nations as President.

+ The Public Prosecution Service continues: “The public does not want this execution to go ahead. The victim’s family does not want this execution to go ahead, and the St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office does not want this execution to go ahead.” And yet it goes ahead. Missouri to execute Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors’ objections and claims of innocence.

+ The lies are the crimes: If you listen to enough Trump rallies or watch enough Fox News, you’re probably convinced we’re in the midst of a historic crime wave. Surprise. Murder and other violent crimes fell in the US last year. Should we zoom in on one city? How about a city that has been in the news a lot lately, Springfield, Ohio, where all those pet-eating Haitians have brought crime to a peaceful community. Springfield had more murders under Trump than under Biden-Harris.

+ Give me a rent Love: “Shortly after he was sworn in, the first-term congressman hired the daughter of his longtime fiancée to work as a special assistant in his district office, eventually raising her salary to about $3,800 a month, payroll records show. In April, Mr. D’Esposito added someone even closer to him: a woman with whom he was having an affair, according to four people familiar with the relationship.” News from the New York Times: A Congressman Had An Affair Then He Put His Lover On The Payroll.

“Could someone do something so horrible that a p-rn site would get shut down?” Joel Stein on Mark Robinson’s infamous feat.

+ Do people really want a spiced version of Coca-Cola? No.

+ People tend to be fat-shamed. Penguins, it seems, celebrate fat. Meet Pesto: the fat baby penguin and viral superstar (who looks exactly like one of my cats).