The SportsThink Review #112
September 20, 2024: SHOHEI, BIllionaire Goofballs, Budweiser
Welcome new readers! The SportsThink Review highlights my favorite sport-related reading and related content. Most things I share are recently published, but some are not; the only rule is that I’ve read or encountered them recently. Some are relevant to my day job as a professor teaching courses on the business, history, and philosophy of sports. Others are just plain interesting, relevant to my lifelong obsession with the games we play. I also occasionally share articles and assorted musings on Twitter. The newsletter is free, but comes with two requests. 1. I’m always open to suggestions, so send me the good stuff that you read! 2. If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with other folks who might enjoy it as well. Finally, I try to focus on non-paywalled writing, but if you find yourself unable to access anything, just hit reply to the email and I’ll do my best to get you a copy. Thanks for reading!
Howdy folks, happy Friday. We’ve got some good things to read on this final weekend of summer, so let’s get to it.
An Insane Day at the Ballpark
The baseball fans have seen this already, but my oh my. 35 years ago, Jose Canseco “created” the 40/40 club—40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in the same season—a benchmark of rarified baseball excellence. Before this season, only four more players joined Canseco in the club. Like Canseco, two of them—Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez—were juiced to the gills when they did it. The consensus is that Alfonso Soriano (2006) and Ronald Acuña Jr. (2023) were clean when they pulled off the feat; Acuña stole an insane 73 bases, just for good measure.
Enter Shohei Ohtani, who joined the club earlier this season. Yesterday, he inaugurated a one-man club, being the first to go 50/50 (he’s actually at 51/51). He did this in preposterous style, with what might be the greatest single game offensive performance in the history of the game. 6 for 6, 3 home runs, 2 steals, 10 RBIs, and 17 total bases. Did I mention he did it in DODGER BLUE? Did I mention that, most years, he’s also a very good pitcher? This is all ridiculous. Here’s a nice recap from the hometown LA Times. My favorite part: “I think he was just feeling good, feeling sexy and just knew, like, ‘I’m about to do this today,’” said Mookie Betts, who witnessed the moment from the on-deck circle. “I mean, he could’ve had four homers today. I’m at a loss for words.” Feeling sexy!
And for good measure, if you’ve ever felt bad about getting something totally wrong, just remember that professional scouts exist:
Owners Feeling Unsexy
Two good, long reads this week that shed light some light on the mindsets of billionaire team owners. “Winners write history”: Inside Robert Kraft’s 12-year Hall of Fame Quest (Don Van Natta Jr., ESPN) is a deep chronicle of the Patriots’ owner’s obsession with getting enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. If I had 11 billion dollars and a bunch of Super Bowl rings, I think I could live without a bust of myself in Canton, Ohio, but that’s just me. This is as gossipy as it is well-reported; it’s fun to pile on the Pats now that they’ve returned to earth.
Similar but different, Brittany Ghiroli and Ken Rosenthal meticulously torch White Sox (and Bulls) owner Jerry Reinsdorf in the Athletic/NYT. The White Sox are on the cusp of ignominy, poised to become the worst baseball team in history in a few days time. By all accounts, the unlovable Reinsdorf deserves full credit here. Less spicy than the Kraft piece, but equally well done.
For a decidedly un-Reinsdorfian take on leadership and management, I enjoyed this thorough look at the Ferrari F1 team (Luke Smith, The Athletic/NYT). The article is a few months old, but I didn’t see till this week. A really nice examination of the storied team’s work to get back to the top of the sport.
There’s No Brewing In Baseball (Ryan Nanni, Assigned)
A fun one to end on. It’s hard to think of something more American than a ballpark beer, but this wasn’t always the case. A nice piece of history that I wasn’t at all familiar with, on the history of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Busch Stadium and the solitary game they played at Budweiser field.
As always, thanks for reading. Please share the newsletter far and wide!
See you next time,
Tolga