The SportsThink Weekly Review #21
October 30, 2020
Hello and welcome to the twenty-first edition of the Weekly Review! I hope that these articles can offer some respite from the non-stop barrage of election news. On to the reads!
Inside the Lines: The Best Writing on Sports I Read This Week
Looking Back on Baseball’s Silent Season by Rowan Ricardo Phillips, via the NYT. A nice reflection as another professional league wraps up the bizzaro year. Spoiler alert: THE DODGERS WIN THE WHOLE THING.
The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League–Obsessed Parents by Ruth S. Barrett, via the Atlantic. Absurd, unhealthy, ridiculous, and 0% surprising. This one has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention on certain corners of the internet these last couple weeks; I even heard a parent ironically (?) reference it as he watched toddlers scramble up a rock climbing type wall at the park last Sunday.
Board to Death: How Scrabble Blew Its Big Moment by Alex Prewitt, via SI. Is Scrabble a sport? Maybe. But it’s in Sports Illustrated, so it’s in this section. Great and unexpected article.
Shades of Grey by Ashley Stimpson, via Longreads. Heavy and thought provoking; I’m not totally sure where I land on this one. I’ll let the tagline do the work: “In 2018, Floridians voted overwhelmingly to end greyhound racing, a sport they were told was archaic and inhumane. What if they were wrong?”
Deciding What Sports to Add During a Pandemic by Steve Dittmore, via ADU. Kind of a niche piece from a niche site, but I thought this was pretty interesting. While we’ve heard much about colleges cutting sports during the pandemic, there are also schools adding to their slate of offerings, which may be less counterintuitive than it seems at first glance.
Tweet of the Week
The voice of my youth.
Non-Sports Reads
The Desert Reclaims Everything by Roberto Andrade Franco, via Texas Highways. On going home after a year of tragedy, by one of my favorite current writers. Readers may remember Franco’s excellent Deadspin piece on Juarez which was recently selected for the annual Best American Sportswriting anthology.
Decoding the Design on In-Flight Seat Belts by Dan Nosowitz, via Atlas Obscura. For those of y’all who have asked the eternal question: why is my car’s seatbelt so much more elaborate than an airplane’s?
As always, thank you for reading. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re having trouble accessing any articles, happy to send them directly your way. And, if you’re enjoying the newsletter, please consider sharing it with someone else who might like it.
See you next week,
Tolga