About this time a year ago, J.R. Moehringer wrote:

“For 100 years or so, baseball was based on integrity. (Other than spitballs and steroids, sign stealing and head hunting, colluding owners and entrenched segregation.) The only major sport to suffer a world championship asterisked by gambling, baseball was zealous about its self-policing and righteous in proclaiming its zero-tolerance policy. Then, seven years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a longstanding federal ban on sports gambling, and in unison baseball’s owners cried: Yee-haw! Let’s party!

“Virtually overnight, Major League Baseball entered multiple partnerships with the gambling industry, permitted stadiums to be plastered with ads for gambling entities and betting apps, and even allowed sports books to operate at some of our most sacrosanct baseball cathedrals, including Wrigley Field, which is like nailing slot machines around the rim of the Grand Canyon.

“The least surprising result of this instant paradigm shift has been widespread confusion among players about where exactly baseball now stands on the whole gambling thing.”

In the piece, Moehringer recounts taking WP Kinsella to “a frigid night game in Denver”. The Canadian novelist, whose work was the inspiration for Field of Dreams, would likely have frozen in disbelief at the monetization of the power of magic.

This year’s recent pantomime that is MLB’s hyper-romanticised Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa, was hardly what you might describe as “self-aware”. Fans might be forgiven for thinking that baseball has now basically given up on trying to keep an arm’s length relationship with organised gambling. But then, like it or not, it’s fans who are largely driving it.

Fortune recently reported that “In 2025, Americans placed roughly $166 billion in bets on sporting events. That’s more than the entire U.S. movie, music, book, and museum industries generated in revenue combined.”

After prediction gambling site Polymarket announced their first formal partnership with an MLB team (guess who), Polymarket’s main competitor in the prediction market space, Kalshi, has just partnered with five of baseball’s highest profile franchises, including four in states where traditional sports betting remains illegal.

A smaller player, Novig, had earlier announced a multi-year deal with the New York Mets.

Camila Grigera Naón writes at Fortune:

“The Novig deal also comes with league‑level guardrails. Novig is designated an MLB Authorized Prediction Market, which means it has to participate in the league’s integrity program. Under that framework, it cannot list certain high‑risk markets, like bets on a single pitch, an individual umpire’s calls, or a one‑off managerial decision. Novig says those markets are especially sensitive because one person can swing the outcome without affecting the final score, creating a hard‑to‑detect opportunity for abuse.”

Adam Kaufman at USA Today writes that:

“The {Kalshi] agreements represent another significant step in prediction markets’ push into mainstream sports, even as Kalshi remains locked in legal battles across the country over whether its sports event contracts should be regulated exclusively as financial products at the federal level or also be subject to state gambling laws.”

And he points to the significance of Kalshi’s initial entrée into markets in Georgia and, particularly, California.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, both Polymarket and Kalshi have – for now at least – friends in high places.

The moves come as a New York Times survey found that MLB players are now “hearing more than ever from those who tie their checking accounts to their performance.”

Zack Meisel writes that 81 out of 100 players contacted “revealed they had been confronted or contacted by a disgruntled fan over the outcome of an outing.”

“It’s common now for broadcasters to weave betting lines or parlay suggestions into their narration. It’s impossible to survey the scene at a ballpark and not spot an ad offering a tempting bonus if you enroll and make your first bet. The players who have no direct say in these corporate alliances are the ones who ultimately determine each bettor’s fate — and they are the ones receiving the backlash.”

Molly Knight wrote two years ago that it was only a matter of time “before gambling nuked the sport.” But maybe, like a classic Scooby-Doo unmasking, it’s been baseball itself, all along.

To return to that opening essay, J.R. Moehringer also writes:

“Gambling isn’t doing anything to baseball’s integrity. Baseball has no integrity. Not anymore. Indeed, many of the ills plaguing baseball are caused by everybody’s refusal to acknowledge this glaring fact.”

With the Little League World Series about to reach its climax this weekend, it perhaps sums everything up that LLWS felt it had to issue this statement – during last year’s tournament.

It’s all still a work in progress.

It’s also not immediately clear what happens to the MLB prediction market deals if there’s a lockout at the beginning of next season, except there will surely be plenty of traffic on when an eventual “Opening Day” might be.

See Also:

Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man

A Game Of Highs And Lows

Make Your Pitch (From June)

Wanna Bet? (From March)

Which Pastime, Exactly? (From November 2025)

Hustle (From May 2025)

Over/Under (a Q&A from the 2022 season with sportswriter and betting strategist Ian Nicholas Quillen)

*

The ‘Worst Of The Worst’?

Some “good” news this week from San Diego as the Padres announced that Oswaldo Pirela, one of the club’s minor league coaches and an immigrant from Venezuela, was released from ICE custody after being detained at the El Paso airport on August 16. The Padres have a minor league affiliate, the Chihuahas, in the Texas city.

According to ESPN, the Department of Homeland Security previously said Pirela came to the U.S. legally in 2014 and “overstayed his welcome” after 2018. His family has disputed Homeland Security’s account and said Pirela had applied for asylum and obtained work permits.

“On Tuesday, DHS said in a statement that Pirela – who had previously played minor league ball for the Texas Rangers – was released on bond pending removal proceedings, adding that work authorization or a pending application do not “confer legal status.”

See Also:

‘I’m Willing To Die To Make Sure You Get Home’ (From July 2025)

‘Just Let Us Be Happy’ (from January 2026)

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History Maker

It’s not often Cubs fans give an opposing player a standing ovation at Wrigley. Even less often for a Cardinal.

But Redbirds rookie Joshua Baez deserved all the accolades after making history by hitting three homers in his first three at-bats in the big leagues.

His record since then hasn’t been quite as euphoric, but no matter. He might turn out to be the new Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes, but he’s in the books.

Inspired by Baez’s accomplishment, retired Lt Gen Mark Hertling – a Cardinals fan – wrote for The Bulwark about how it ranks in his memories of one of the game’s great franchises and the stars it produced.

“Each [memory] is connected in my mind not simply with where the ball landed but with where I was in life when it did. Like the changing of the seasons, like the birthdays and anniversaries and holidays that dot the calendar, the pacing of baseball—the pitches and outs, the games and series, the seasons and careers—mark a life over time.

“That’s the magic of Field of Dreams, too. The movie isn’t really about Shoeless Joe Jackson, or a crazy ballfield in an Iowa cornfield, or even, ultimately, baseball. It’s about fathers and sons, growing older, memory, reconciliation, and the things that somehow remain constant while everything in America changes.”

See Also:

For The Ages (From April 2026)

*

Batting – And Pitching – Around

And you just know that if the White Sox win it all they’re going to the Vatican, not whatever might be left of the White House by then.

See Also:

Southsiders On Road To Redemption

*

The latest ABS challenge rankings show that the Cincinnati Reds are ranked first overall in effectiveness of their challenges, while the team also has the two most successful in the hitter and catcher categories, in Sal Stewart and Tyler Stephenson.

(Talking of the Reds, it seems they placed third-baseman Eugenio Suarez on waivers on Wednesday, right after he hit a game-winning grand slam in San Francisco. Ray Ratto at Defector called the game A Stirring Testament To The Power Of Reds Week.)

In the ranking of MLB umpires’ effectiveness, Dillon Wilson, Derek Thomas and Louie Krupa are the three with the lowest percentage of challenges overturned – all of them under 40 per cent.

It’s probably no surprise which umpire had the highest percentage of overturned calls.

Some recent wise words from Lance Barksdale (ranked 72nd)…

See Also:

Game Note, April Fools Day 2026 – The first game decided by a successful challenge.

Challenging The System (From September 2025)

History Behind The Plate (From August 2025)

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Tickets, Please

The top left ticket is particularly special because it was my younger son’s first-ever game. It was just before his eighth birthday. I’d only been to the old Tiger Stadium once before this, and the next time I’d see a game in Detroit would be at Comerica Park.

The Orioles won 11-4. Cal Ripken Jr wasn’t in the line-up that day, but he spent a long time before the game signing autographs behind home plate. A few days later in Baltimore, he hit his 400^th career home run.

My family and I walked the bases after the game. I’m going to give this ticket to my son when I see him in Cincinnati next month.

The ticket immediately below it is from the Washington Nationals first season, bringing baseball back to the nation’s capital. President George W Bush threw out the first pitch at the team’s home opener, on April 14, 2005. They beat the Diamondbacks 5-3.

By the time of this game, on 25 August of their inaugural season, the Nats had a 66-61 record, but fell 5-3 to the Reds, with Liván Hernández taking the loss. The Nats would famously finish their opening campaign 81-81, ending the historic season as they began it, with a loss to the Phillies.

See Also:

History (From September 2025)

*

No Game Notes for a while as I’m in Belfast, then I’m taking a short break to go to Italy for a friend’s wedding before, all being well, heading back to the US in time to mark the 25^th anniversary of September 11 at Yankee Stadium.

Since I was living in NYC at the time, that day means a great deal to me and I always try to go to a ballgame for everyone who can’t.

Here are notes from the games I’ve managed to see this season – and over the rest of the project.

***

As always, thanks for reading.

During the regular season I try to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. I do my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.

There’s a full States of Play archive here, and a ‘Just Baseball’ index for this season here.

Finally, if you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.

You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.

Here’s how it works:

You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it’s published.

The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it? And then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?

I’ll round out the other questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, as well as anything else you might like to talk about. It’ll finish up with your thoughts on where things might be headed. Obviously, you’ll get final approval before it gets posted.

Sound good? Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully see you at a ballgame.

*

Unlike with most politicians, it’s completely impossible to predict what the first line of Donald Trump’s obituary might eventually be. That’s simply because, for now at least, there’s always tomorrow. And, honestly, who knows what he might do with each new day.

It’s not enough that our posterity-preoccupied president is desperate to have his name or likeness adorn as many public buildings as he can in the nation’s capital, while pressing ahead with his ostentatious and legally contentious alterations to the People’s House.

Now, Trump seems just as determined to cement his legacy with an irrevocable upending of America’s role in the world and the destruction of relationships with the declining number of allies who trust us. This quest appears increasingly unhinged as he runs out of options for resolving his inept and interminable war.

After threatening to “bomb the shit” out of Oman if it “gets in the way” of a deal with Iran – where his renewed warnings of an “economic D-Day” only pushed up the price of oil – Trump turned on South Korea, apparently surprising the government in Seoul as he curtailed annual joint military exercises.

The New York Times reported:

“American troops have been through this before. Mr. Trump abruptly canceled the exercise in 2018 during his first administration, without notifying Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

“At the time, Trump administration officials said they wanted to give negotiations meant to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions an opportunity to succeed. Mr. Trump met with Mr. Kim three times but ultimately failed in that goal.”

The Times continued: “In a rambling social media post on Sunday, Mr. Trump complained that South Korea had not supported the Trump administration in its war against Iran. He also said the military exercises were expensive, “with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!).”

Since a panic over resource shortages has been denied by the Pentagon, the reason for such a decision would appear to be nothing more strategically substantive than Trump wanting to again butter up a leader who once, famously, called him a “dotard”.

But, even as Kim taunted Trump with a celebratory short-range missile launch, the petulant shift has a much greater significance. Tom Nichols wrote at The Atlantic that Trump may have “effectively just told Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”

“Anyone can get distracted now and then, and say things out loud he or she probably shouldn’t say. Perhaps an excited friend lets on about a surprise party, or a co-worker dishes up some unseemly office gossip. Or, if you’re the president of the United States, you might reveal some numbers about an adversary’s nuclear arsenal and then admit that those weapons, even a relatively small number of them, are pretty darn useful.

“Donald Trump made this impromptu foray into nuclear-deterrence issues yesterday when he was inspecting the destruction he’s inflicted on the White House East Wing. A reporter asked whether he was again exchanging letters with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a reference to the president’s earlier epistolary bromance with Pyongyang’s dictator. “I can’t tell you that,” Trump responded. “But I get along with him. And you know what? The fact that I get along with him, that’s a good thing. Not a bad thing.”

“It’s not always a “good thing” to “get along with” a murderous autocrat who runs a country that is functionally a prison camp, especially one with a nuclear arsenal. The size of that arsenal is a tightly held secret in Pyongyang, but it is not inconsequential: Experts working from open sources have made various guesses, usually in the range of roughly 60 thermonuclear weapons.”

Phelim Kine at Politico, meanwhile, writes that Trump’s snub of South Korea has “sent the region scrambling.”

“As recently as December, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared South Korea a “model ally” worthy of a “special favor.” The apparent reevaluation of that relationship is the latest sign that Trump can quickly flip on longtime partners in the region. In May, Trump delayed a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan as a “bargaining chip” with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

“The U.S. has long worked to buttress alliances in Asia as a counterweight to Beijing’s growing military dominance. Over recent months, however, the Trump administration has appeared to see that as less essential, and Asian countries have already been investing in their own capacities.”

This process of unravelling America’s global relationships is made even more absurd by the realisation that it appears it is being made up as we go along, dependent largely on the president’s mood on any given day.

Everything has a cost. And Trump personally will pay none of it. Republicans in Congress have abdicated their responsibility for keeping America strong, and Americans safe. By leaving their president unrestrained, they are doing neither of those things.

And the challenge for whoever follows Trump – regardless of party – will not be so much if they want to try to undo the damage, but whether they actually can.

The 60-day Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, during which the sides were supposed to explore a permanent peace agreement, formally expired on Monday, even though Trump had declared it “over” a few weeks after he signed it at, perhaps ironically, Versailles.

Trump thought nothing of denying service families’ complaints about conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln – even saying the carrier’s current nine-month deployment was “not nearly long enough”. The Lincoln was finally relieved this week, amid accusations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had covered up the real reason why it had not been resupplied.

Phillips O’Brien this week explored how America under Trump, and particularly through this conflict, is “not a serious country.”

“The USA in many ways has not been a serious country during this entire Iran War. It started it without a strategy, with no match between ways, ends and means, and it has been going downhill since then. It is now fighting this war simply because it has no idea what else to do, and does not have the courage to admit that it has failed..

“The USA is still engaged in a war (a blockade is an act of war) which has not the slightest purpose beyond the ego of the commander in chief. The war has already weakened the country and the longer it goes on, the weaker the country will become.”

O’Brien continues:

“If the USA were a serious country, it would realize it has lost this war (actually it would not have started it). And having lost, it is best to get out of it ASAP, as each day it lasts, as I’ve been trying to get across for months now, weakens the USA and strengthens Iran.”

See Also:

‘Low-Keying It’

The Big Deal That Wasn’t

Brain Fog Of War

The Stone Age, You Say? (From April)

King Of Pain (From October 2025)

‘Once In A Generation Moment’ (From February 2025)

*

Hiding In Plain Sight

Plenty has been written already about the circumstances in which the president found himself secreted in an airline catering cart following a supposed “threat” that the CIA pegged as “low confidence” on the way back from the Nato summit in Turkey.

Plenty more still about who he chose to accompany him; and about those who, knowingly or unknowingly, were left aboard the so-called decoy plane.

But two things remain true – the imagery of Trump’s vulnerability is now indelible, and the nerve struck by Georgia Sen Jon Ossoff in his subsequent broader critique of the event was very real.

Trump’s constant travelling companion, Natalie Harp – largely unknown to the general public and famously described by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times as the president’s “binky” – has emerged as more than just a “human printer”.

As Jay Kuo writes, she’s thought to be responsible for many of Trump’s often bizarre AI-generated social media posts.

“If you’re wondering who is scouring the internet looking for wild content Trump will like, look no further than Harp. Per the Journal, Harp provided Trump with proposed posts that “often recycle content from other accounts that Harp or advisers think would appeal to Trump.” Harp then logs into the president’s account, at times outside normal work hours, to post batches of Trump-approved messages. (Trump also posts some content himself.) The Journal found the account had posted at least 8,800 times since the start of Trump’s second term, including one stretch of 55 posts between 10:14 p.m. and 1:12 a.m., and another of nearly 160 posts in under four hours on Dec. 1. It’s unclear if Trump is posting these himself, if Harp is posting them for him, or if it’s some combination of both.”

This, don’t forget, is the Trump social media feed to which early access is now being sold to traders and investors for a reported $100,000 a month.

Kristen Holmes and Adam Cancryn at CNN were among those filling in more of the background.

“Earlier this year, Trump ignited a firestorm after posting and then deleting a racist video that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle. The late-night post prompted criticism across the political spectrum, sparking a series of damaging news cycles and forcing Trump and his aides to scramble to mount a defense.

“Within Trump’s orbit, allies and advisers privately speculated that Harp was responsible for the post, as she was one of a small number of aides with access to Trump’s Truth Social account.

“But they were reluctant to name her, one source told CNN. If they did, they worried the fallout would only further strengthen Trump’s support for Harp.”

Tom Schaller at Public Notice explored the complicated situation regarding Harp’s security clearance and described her as behaving “like a rock band groupie, not a presidential adviser.”

Whatever the actual story, if anyone really cares, press secretary Karoline Leavitt – one of the high-profile passengers on the ‘old AF1’ – announced her departure from the White House.

Robert Mackey at The Guardian wondered will Trump’s next press secretary be a better liar than the previous five?

Among those suggested as Leavitt’s possible replacement have been CNN commentator and Mitch McConnell whisperer, Scott Jennings; one of Trump’s former personal attorneys Alina Habba, and, yes, Natalie Harp.

See Also:

When Your Word Is Worthless (From July)

Doctor, My Eyes (From April)

Piggies, Seditionists And Symbols Of Hate (From November 2025)

*

Dukes A Hazard?

With the country now around ten weeks from the midterms, perhaps more telling than any of the president’s recent poor polling could be the victory this week of Democrat Brandon Dukes in a special election to the statehouse in Pennsylvania.

What made his win noteworthy was that it came in deep-red Butler County, near where Trump survived an assassination attempt during the 2024 campaign, and where Republicans have held the state seat for decades.

But Praveena Somasundaram at The Washington Post cautions against extrapolation.

“Special and general elections can’t be compared directly for several reasons. Most notably, special elections generally have much lower turnout. A surprising result during a special race does not guarantee that the pattern will repeat during a general election, when more people are paying attention and plan to vote.

“In Pennsylvania’s 12th House District, with more than 95 percent of ballots counted as of Wednesday, only about 16,800 people voted. The district’s 2024 general election saw more than double that turnout, with about 43,000 voters.”

Meanwhile, on the national stage, Ben Davis writes at The Guardian that while the left is increasingly winning within the Democratic party, it still needs to prove that it can build general-election coalitions capable of beating Republicans.

Primary voting in Florida included at least one mail-in ballot whose sender believes is cheating.

In the GOP primary for Minnesota Governor, Trump ally and pillow salesman Mike Lindell continues to claim foul play and says he expects to pay around a million dollars for a recount.

With the South Carolina Republican primary runoff set for this coming Tuesday, Darline – not Darlene – Graham, who took over her brother Lindsey’s senate seat after his death last month, had something of a nightmare debate performance.

But it didn’t take her long to get back on track…

If reliably-red Texas is any indicator, Trump’s backing for AG Ken Paxton may prove to be a bridge too far come November. With each day, Paxton is being out-witted by Democrat James Talarico, although it appears that there are plenty of unforced errors in the campaign.

Meanwhile, construction of Data Centers is becoming an increasingly divisive issue nationally; with even Texas Gov Greg Abbott announcing a moratorium. More than 70 per cent of Americans say they are opposed to building new Data Centers in their area.

Molly Taft wrote at Wired on the backlash from both the left and the right, in a good piece titled How Data Centers Broke American Politics.

“Data center resistance certainly has some of its roots in classic NIMBYism: Lots of Americans simply don’t trust stuff being built, in their backyards, by powerful companies for mysterious purposes. But the pace of the outrage that’s built up around the country is shocking. A recent Gallup poll showed that 70 percent of Americans would somewhat oppose or strongly oppose data center construction in their area. In the past few months, we’ve seen an attack on a pro-data-center council member (Indianapolis’ Ron Gibson); an attack on a tech CEO (OpenAI’s Sam Altman); data center moratoriums introduced in at least a dozen states (including Georgia) and passed in one (New York); and countless cities and counties passing their own bans or moratoriums, including in deep-red places like Hill County, Texas. People have been either arrested, detained, or escorted out while protesting data centers at public meetings in New Jersey, California, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

“When I started reporting on data centers last year, Washington was, seemingly, completely unprepared for the backlash. It was unprepared for anything AI-related, really — small wonder for a Congress full of folks so old they can barely work their phones. Two of the first national politicians who I saw call out data center development were the right-wing populists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, who worried about how a proposed 10-year ban on state-level AI regulations could be leveraged to build data centers on private property. “Forcing eminent domain on people’s private properties to link the future Skynet is not very Republican,” Greene tweeted in June 2025.”

The impact of the issue on local races is clearly growing and with key GOP senate seats at risk, like Sen Jon Husted in Ohio, the party has issued a warning to AI companies on the possible impact of what they call a “sleeper issue” for the election cycle.

Husted is currently polling about eight points behind former Sen Sherrod Brown.

Donald Trump, however, remains all in, calling Data Centers “a tremendous thing”.

See Also:

Winners And Losers

A Flailing Campaign Strategy

Delusion, Distraction, Desperation

Loser

Get Out The Map (From May)

There’s More Than One Way To Win (From February)

Vote While You Still Can (From November 2025)

*

Cash, Crypto And Corruption

As US national debt exceeded $40 trillion for the first time observers laid the blame at the door of the president, arguing that the rapid expansion is “thanks almost entirely to the cost of GOP tax breaks, the war in Iran and the White House’s failed tariffs agenda.”

Steve Benen writes at MSNow:

“Remember 1998? Around this time 28 years ago, Bill Clinton proudly declared that the deficit was officially gone, and record surpluses soon followed. At the time, the United States was on track to do the unthinkable: pay off its national debt. Republican governance soon followed, setting us on a path to $40 trillion in debt.

“The historical pattern is worth remembering: Despite the conventional wisdom about which party has credibility on fiscal issues, over the past several decades, budget deficits have grown by massive amounts under every Republican administration (Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2 and Trump), while shrinking under every Democratic administration (Clinton, Obama and Biden).

“The next Democratic president needs to be prepared: Time will tell who prevails in the 2028 presidential election, but if it’s a Democrat, they’ll need to understand that they’re inheriting a severe budgetary mess, which will be met by a new round of GOP hysterics about the mess that Republicans themselves created.”

This past week, the Trump-appointed Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved a bank charter application for the president’s family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial.

The previous day, Catherine Rampell wrote at The Bulwark:

“Donald Trump promised Americans a new golden age. Unfortunately, it turns out to be a golden age for diarrhea and white-collar crime.”

She was writing about how the Treasury department had announced it would destroy the government’s registry of shell-company ownership, “an anti-corruption database that Treasury is by law required to maintain, so that law enforcement can more easily “follow the money” when investigating crimes.”

Casey Michel at The Atlantic called the move “A Green Light For Crooks” and said that while technically the registry would still exist, it would be a “mockery of its former self.”

“The new rule “serves only one purpose: to make corruption easier to conceal,” Michel, a corruption expert and senior nonresident fellow for the Center for International Policy, told Truthout.

“The only people celebrating the move are ultra-wealthy Americans and kleptocratic regimes around the world who use anonymous shell companies to squirrel away their money, hiding their ill-gotten gains from public accountability,” Michel went on. “The move will only increase corruption in the US, and further transform US politics into a pay-to-play racket in which the wealthy few benefit at the expense of the rest of us.”

See Also:

Carte Blanche

The Wise And Honest (From March)

Happy Birthday To Me (From February)

Tribute (From May 2025)

*

Fantasy/Reality

For a long time now, one of my favorite writers has been Kurt Andersen.

His non-fiction book ‘Fantasyland’ – which will be a decade old next year – comes as close as anything to helping us understand how and why we ended up where we are.

I’m looking forward to reading his new novel, which came out this week and which sounds like it portrays all of us collectively in what seems could be a logical conclusion to our time.

See Also:

Still In Love With You

***

As always, thanks for reading.

When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not expect how wildly out of whack things in the political world were about to become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for ‘normality’.

As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re just plain wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.

The two links in the above paragraphs change with each weekly column – the pieces are definitely worth reading. They’re all linked here:

During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. As you might expect, one has been relatively more sane than the other.

*

Finally, one of my regular reads is the Substack of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. This week he wrote about his tendency to write too long and publish too much. It’s something I think everyone wrestles with from time to time. I know I’m guilty of it, and certainly each week can just seem overwhelming, as we’re constantly flooded with nonsensical, yet at the same time, hugely significant behavior.

As the current president’s time grows shorter it’s more important than ever to chronicle his late-stage decline, but I’m conscious that you all have just too much to read to begin with. My aim with this Substack is to point you in the direction of pieces that you may have missed or should find time to read. I know there are too many links.

When I do a politics column, I end up editing out about half of what I originally write, and what’s left is still too long. So an apology also from me for all that, I’ll think about how it can be more effective and less self-indulgent; and, again, my thanks to you for sticking with it.

*

However romantic – or contradictory – the Field of Dreams performance can be, at the end of the day, the game still counts and it reminds us that everything comes back to who’s winning and who’s losing.

Mike Lupica wrote yesterday that it’s the Boston Red Sox “who have done the most so far this season to remind us – as if we ever need reminding – of the magic of the long season in baseball.”

Every team runs hot and cold at some point. How they deal with a collective cold streak (picture Roy Hobbs walking out of the locker room as the sports shrink talks about being on a ship at sea…) is as fascinating as how they manage a hot one.

But it’s rare and exciting when an almost 180-degree turnaround enters the territory of being a “fairytale”. That’s how Sarah Langs described the Red Sox’ historic hot streak after such a devastatingly poor start.

“It’s not just the wins in the span that makes this a fairytale stretch,” she writes. “The added context is important.”

And what a turnaround it has been. Even the most diehard fans have been at a loss to explain how this was basically the same team that was 32–46 on June 24.

Bradford Doolittle wrote at ESPN:

“We still can’t say that the hot streak is over, but it does feel like a good time to take stock. Just what have we been watching from the Red Sox? Why did it happen and, perhaps more importantly, what was going on at Fenway before? How rare is it to get that hot? And what does all of this portend for the coming postseason?”

If there was one single game recently that summed up what we’ve all been watching, it was how the Red Sox battled back relentlessly to overcome the White Sox in dramatic extra innings.

They proved they could even win in their City Connect unis (which to be fair is one of the more impressive designs amid MLB’s regular merch-fest); while the team and their fans raised $300,000 for victims of the earthquake in Venezuela. There was also the deeply wild “Fourth Out” game which will be a staple trivia question in years to come.

To return to that Mike Lupica commentary we started with, he writes:

“Red Sox fans just sat back in wonder as their team swept that four-game series against New York in late June and just kept going from there. And those fans are well aware that in the same baseball season, the Sox have now swept series from Yankees, Rays, Dodgers, White Sox -- all of them in first place at the time. I’ve mentioned this before, but as the Red Sox continued to make their run -- not just at a Wild Card, but at both the Yankees and the Rays -- a Sox fan I know texted me with this simple message:

“Summer back on.”

Before my many Red Sox Nation friends get too carried away – and I know your enthusiasm has always been tempered by pragmatic reality – Matt Gross at Over The Monster draws some interesting parallels between the Red Sox and the 2009 Colorado Rockies.

“The good news is the 2009 Rockies recovered pretty swiftly from their five game skid, going 20-11 the rest of the way and making the playoffs as a Wild Card team with 92 wins. So if you’re concerned about how the Sox have played of late, their North Star team says we’ll still see October.

“The bad news? That 2009 Rockies team ended up losing in the LDS in four games because their closer, who had been great all year, was battling a nagging injury and allowed a run in the ninth inning of both games 3 and 4. I spent the following few days in the comments section of Purple Row arguing that Tracy should have used the lefty reliver they acquired at the deadline in that situation ….. And Oh My God if the Red Sox season ends in this fashion, I’m going to freak!”

See Also:

‘We May Lose Or We May Win, But We Will Never Be Here Again…’

*

Dodgeball

One of the division-leading teams the Red Sox swept during their run was the Los Angeles Dodgers, who offered a contrast in form and maybe an important lesson – be careful whose party invites you accept.

Now the “curse” might not, of course, be an actual thing, but after visiting the White House to celebrate their back-to-back World Series titles on July 23, the Dodgers went 4-9 in their next 13 games, then losing eight of nine and showing definite signs of a “mid-season malaise.” Just last night, closer Edwin Díaz blew his third save in a week, as the team dropped behind the Milwaukee Brewers for the best record in the National League.

Jake Elman at Fansided wrote that the defending champs suddenly look “startlingly beatable.” At least Freddie Freeman was ok after that tumble into the dugout.

As Ryan Phillips writes at Sports Illustrated:

“Now, let’s be real: no one is particularly worried about the Dodgers. Yet, at least. They’re still overwhelming favorites to win the World Series, and their addition of ace Tarik Skubal at the trade deadline only enhanced those chances. But beneath the surface, L.A. has shown some cracks since the All-Star break, and if the playoffs started today, the champs wouldn’t even get a bye in the first round. It’s also worth noting this is the first time the Dodgers have endured a streak of losing eight of nine games since their infamous September collapse in 2017 when they dropped 11 in a row (yet still won 104 games in the regular season and came within one game of winning the World Series).”

If it’s any consolation for Dodger fans – and it likely isn’t – the city’s sports attention has been pre-occupied with the surprising sale of Mark Walter’s other team, the Lakers.

Veteran sportswriter Bill Plaschke is among many who feel that “something stinks” about the record sale that netted Walter about $2bn after his ten months of ownership.

Matt Yoder at Awful Announcing summarises events and the reaction:

“Plaschke offered up some of the elements of the sale that have drawn suspicion in the hours since the news broke.

“Walter made the decision to sell in the wake of a federal investigation over illegal loans. And the fact that he sold the team to the billionaire venture capitalist who just so happens to be the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law gives the appearance that the two could be related. Of course, that has been denied by the White House, but this is Donald Trump’s America. And if there’s anything we know about Donald Trump’s America, it’s that political influence will be wielded, especially when there is money to be made for those aligned with the president.

“Also, this just so happened to come just days after Josh Kushner was at the front of Gianni Infantino’s plans to privatize the World Cup after hobnobbing around America with Trump. That plan was soundly defeated by soccer administrators around the world and now Infantino’s FIFA presidency is hanging by a thread. And now a $12 billion deal for the Lakers has come together in less than a week? It’s unprecedented.”

According to Jack Harris for California Post, Walter has apparently no plans to sell the Dodgers as well.

“Another question that arose in the wake of Wednesday’s news was whether the Dodgers’ vast financial resources –– which have helped them construct league-record payrolls of more than $400 million, before luxury taxes, the last two seasons –– could be impacted by the apparent uncertainty suddenly surrounding Walter’s non-sports-related businesses.

But [Dodgers team president Stan] Kasten was declarative in his answer to that, saying: “I have no reason to think that.”

See Also:

Rough Trades

Dodger Fans Play Hardball

Dodging The Elephant (From April 2025)

*

South Siders On Road To Redemption

Paul Sullivan writes at the Chicago Tribune that Wednesday’s White Sox pope hat promotion night “made believers out of everyone.”

“The Pope Hat Night took on a life of its own and eclipsed the actual game between the first-place White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, a rematch of the 1919 World Series that the Sox threw and went down in history as the Black Sox Scandal. The Sox didn’t win another World Series for 86 years, lacking the kind of divine intervention the Sox bring up so often now that their biggest fan is in the Vatican.

“My late uncle John Sullivan was the founding pastor of the Spirit of God Fellowship in South Holland and once gave a sermon at his church with the theme “Did Jesus Have a Sense of Humor?” The answer, he said, was “yes,” though you never see any examples in the Bible. Being spiritual is also being human, he said, and everyone likes a good knee-slapper once in a while.

“The pope is no different, we can assume, because he’s from Chicago. There’s a reason why Second City alums dominate the comedy field. This town likes to laugh, and can laugh at itself.”

All joking aside, though, the Sign of Peace in the middle of the fifth inning has to be one of my absolute favorite things anywhere about this whole baseball season. (clip via OVS News)

But as Scott Merkin writes at MLB.com:

“The magic somehow ran out on this night, as the Reds rallied from four runs down for a 5-4 victory in 10 innings, dropping the White Sox (61-57) lead in the American League Central to 2 1/2 games over the Tigers (59-60).

“And the fans? Well, the 2026 White Sox season has been the most fun they’ve had in quite some time. That commentary has nothing to do with three straight seasons of 100-plus losses entering ‘26.”

See Also:

Divine Intervention (From June)

The Pope And Nellie Fox (From December 2025)

The South Side’s Very Own… (From May 2025)

Take Me To Church (From May 2025)

*

Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man

I wrote a little last time out about the incredible recent surge in spending on sports gambling – now “more on sports bets than movies, arts, museums, and music combined” according to Fortune magazine – and we’re all considering the broader implications, not just for baseball but for society.

And since we kicked off with a mention of the Field of Dreams game, it’s worth restating this; since pictures paint a thousand words, the irony couldn’t possibly be lost on anyone, right? Right?

And then also putting this alongside.

(Best reply? This one)

See Also:

Wanna Bet? (From March 2026)

Which Pastime, Exactly? (From November 2025)

Hustle (From May 2025)

*

Batting Around

The full post-season schedule is here. Here’s a few of the players we might expect to see come October.

And one we probably won’t, unfortunately…

*

Reading the Field

When I was at SABR in Cleveland recently I had the chance to chat with Bill Brewster and pick up a copy of his book from a few years ago about the place where he grew up, Waverly, New York.

Looking forward to dipping into That Lively Railroad Town when I get a chance.

*

This week saw the launch of the Joy of Baseball podcast, with hosts Molly Knight and Joe Posnanski.

On the debut episode, their guest is Mike Schur, one of those diehard Red Sox fans I was talking about earlier.

One of the things he talks about is a bittersweet episode from around September 11^th.

I was living in New York City at that time and am aiming to be back in town for the upcoming 25^th anniversary, so Mike’s story meant a lot.

See Also:

More Reading The Field

Sources And Resources

*

Tickets, Please

Will return next week (since my physical tickets are all in Belfast…)

In the meantime, here’s some reminiscing via the always excellent artist Todd Radom.

**

Game Notes w/e 14 August

Thursday 6 August, Baltimore Orioles vs California Angels, Camden Yards, Baltimore MD.

A picture-perfect day at Camden Yards for an afternoon game against the worst team in baseball. It did not go well.

It was actually a strange start to the outing, when for the very first time since I’ve been living here a cop got on the light rail to check tickets. Everyone looked kind of astonished, so I knew it wasn’t just me. I’m a firm believer in public transit in cities and I also believe it should be free, as a collective civic benefit. But I’m glad I bought a $4 roundtripper today.

Inside, the one thing I noticed was that Gunnar Henderson jerseys easily outnumbered the Adley Rutschman gear. Hardly surprising this week, I guess, but a sad reflection nonetheless.

The irony, of course, being that while at Rutschman’s new home at Fenway Park, the Red Sox are on a near-historic tear, the lackluster Orioles contrived to find numerous ways to lose to the team with the worst record in baseball.

The all-too simple conclusion is that it’s “just” a lack of hitting.

Paul Folkemer at Camden Chat called the 4-1 loss to the Los Angeles Angels “one of their most pathetic, frustrating efforts of the season,” and among the Orioles’ “dumbest losses of the year. And there have been many.”

The Halos themselves may be having another poor season, but it’s always worth the price of admission to see one of game’s greatest hitters, even if he had an off-day. If ever there was a guy who deserved to be in the post-season more often than he has, it’s Mike Trout. The guy is a 12-time All-Star and ironically has just 12 post-season plate appearances.

Happy Birthday.

*

Thursday 13 August; Washington Nationals vs Chicago Cubs, Nationals Park, Washington DC.

No sweep for the Cubs and a complete reversal from last night’s outstanding game, in which Alex Bregman hit three homers as the visitors took it 12-6.

Today they couldn’t even get on the board as the Nats’ Cade Cavalli took a no-hitter into the seventh before it was broken up by Michael Busch with a hit that meant nothing apart from ending it. The damage was done well before, though, as Craig Counsell left Kevin Gausman in for an inning too long.

The little kid in my row who yelled at his dad “BUT I NEED TO POOP!” kind of spoke for all of us. But I still got one of my favorite fan photos of the season.

Finally, and with much better karma, it was the anniversary this week of David Bote’s remarkable walk-off Grand Slam against the Nationals at Wrigley in 2018.

I always re-post this on the day, since it seems just perfect.

*

Previous Game Notes are here.

***

As always, thanks for reading.

During the regular season I try to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. I do my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.

There’s a full States of Play archive here, and a ‘Just Baseball’ index for this season here.

Finally, if you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you, and you can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.

You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.

Here’s how it works:

You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it’s published.

The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it? And then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?

I’ll round out the other questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, as well as anything else you might like to talk about. It’ll finish up with your thoughts on where things might be headed. Obviously, you’ll get final approval before it gets posted.

Sound good? Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully see you at a ballgame.

*

With Donald Trump appearing to be, as several commentators expressed this weekend, “trapped between escalation and a deal on Tehran’s terms,” the president’s hugely unpopular and grossly expensive war of choice in the Middle East continues to flounder in uncertainty as both sides seem prepared to wait each other out.

Trump believes Iran’s economy is “in very bad shape” and “they have no money.” But as Patrick Wintour writes at The Guardian, the battle of perceptions works both ways.

“Mehr News, an agency close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, published a piece saying Iran had given Trump a major dilemma. “Continuing the war could increase political and economic pressure on the government and exacerbate the decline in his popularity. On the other hand, backing down, or moving towards reducing tensions, could also be interpreted by some of Trump’s supporters as a retreat from his campaign slogans,” it said.

“From this perspective, the outcome of this war will not be played out on the battlefield, but at the ballot box.”

For the US, the “long-tail” cost of Trump’s war has been estimated to be as much as a trillion dollars with taxpayers feeling the effects for years to come, and right now the only certainty seems to be that however the conflict “ends” is primarily out of Washington’s hands.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of a plan for Gaza put forward by the president’s so-called ‘Board of Peace’ followed fresh Iranian demands surrounding the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz, amid a potential deal between Tehran and Oman on management of the waterway.

The president said only that the US was “semi-negotiating” with Iran, whatever that might actually mean. Iran, for its part, had said Trump was conducting “theatre diplomacy on loop.”

The Pentagon, meanwhile, still appears to be running low on both crucial munitions and ideas, even turning to crowdsourcing next steps.

All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of concern among military families over lengthy service deployments and conditions on board one of the largest aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln.

“In both of those meetings, family members expressed concerns directly to Navy leaders about the well-being and safety of their loved ones after the aircraft carrier set a modern-day record during the ongoing Iran war for the most continuous days at sea.

“Among the concerns brought up in the contentious meetings: the sailors’ mental health, safety on deck, a lack of supplies, food shortages, water contamination and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages en route to the ship to be lost in transit for months.

“Loved ones pleaded for information on when their sailors would return home. It remains a question that does not have any answer.”

Also, to say nothing of recent potential cyberattacks on America’s water facilities in a number of states. Initially, Trump even said Minnesota was to blame, rather than Iran.

Elsewhere, the symbolism of the administration’s “plan” to take control of Cuba – which some may assume offers a more realistic version for Venezuela Redux – fits neatly into its broader narrative around combatting communism at home and abroad ahead of the midterms. But The New York Times reported that “American spy agencies have assessed that Cuba is less like Venezuela and more like Iran, according to people briefed on the intelligence reports.”

And then, of course, there’s a somewhat sketchy oil-related adventure in Greenland, somehow involving TV’s Dr Phil and accompanied by the usual provocative presidential AI image.

The ‘Madman Theory’ of diplomatic unpredictability notwithstanding, in a piece for The Atlantic with a hed and sub-hed that, really, could apply to any Trump-related story, on any day over the past year and a half, Tom Nichols says:

“Trump has now passed from being a stubborn narcissist to a cocooned authoritarian. Political scientists since World War II have studied the problem of “irrational” leaders, people in positions of power who seem unable to accept any version of reality that conflicts with their assumptions. Irrational, in this sense, does not mean “stupid,” or “incompetent,” or “psychotic.” It refers more specifically to leaders who have become so trapped by their own self-regard, so isolated from the outside world, so imprisoned within their own sense of infallibility that they refuse to consider any arguments or information that conflicts with their beliefs.”

Nichols concludes:

“Trump is not going to have some sudden epiphany about the need for an open and honest policy process. Like other authoritarians before him, the president has retreated, irrevocably, behind the walls of his own Forbidden City of the mind—a place where he is the emperor, his judgment is always right, and his commands must always be obeyed.”

Leaving aside the whole ephemeral meme-farm consequence of the president’s new hairdo, Julie Roginsky writes how there is little hope of any political constraint under the current system.

“Congress has repeatedly considered resolutions directing him to end unauthorized hostilities with Iran, only for lawmakers, procedural obstacles, and executive branch legal theories to render those restraints largely ineffective. In his second term, the president has also surrounded himself with inexperienced yes-men who will never tell him no, even if he were to launch nuclear weapons at their parents’ nursing homes. The constitutional machinery remains but the political courage required to operate it does not.”

With polling on the war and Trump’s other main obsessions making grim reading for the GOP, Axios reported that the “verdict on his second term seems clear”:

“Even some longtime insiders fear he’s trapped by a war he shouldn’t have waged, tariffs he shouldn’t have levied, monuments he shouldn’t be obsessed with.”

You would think that with Trump’s long, frequently acrimonious history regarding the nation’s military, that posting an AI image that was widely attacked as “stolen valor” might prove to be a bridge too far among many of his supporters, but maybe not.

The problem is we’re well past the point where no-one tells him something like this might be ill-advised, so he’ll just keep doing it. Or rather, whoever’s doing it for him will just keep doing it.

And, really, what does stolen valor matter when you’ve already stolen everything else?

See Also:

The Big Deal That Wasn’t

The Brain Fog Of War

At War With Ourselves (From June)

Crisis, Chaos And Corruption (From April)

Doctor My Eyes (From April)

Kick The Nest, Get Stung (From March)

The Only Restraint Is ‘My Own Morality’ (From January)

Nice Country You’ve Got Here (From March 2025)

*

Carte Blanche

Fifty years after its release, Alan J. Pakula’s masterpiece All The President’s Men can’t help but seem quaint now, in so many ways.

Writing recently at Esquire, Anthony Breznican reminded us of one of the movie’s many great lines that have aged perfectly:

“Forget the myths that the media has created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys. And things got out of hand.”

Todd Blanche was confirmed by the full Senate as Donald Trump’s Attorney-General on a 50-49 vote in the early hours of Saturday morning. Confirming Trump’s former personal lawyer is one more step in the administration’s efforts to push the envelope on how far they can go to protect, immunize and enrich the sitting president.

The vote – immediately before the upper chamber broke for recess – came after outgoing Republican Senators on the judiciary committee John Cornyn and Thom Tillis – who had absolutely no reason to abandon their previous ‘principled’ objections to the appointment – folded like a cheap card table.

The physician who infamously gave the nation HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, Sen Bill Cassidy, said he almost voted ‘no’ and seemed to want some credit for at least thinking about it.

On Blanche’s consistently questionable handling of the Epstein Files, Alison Durkee writes at Forbes that:

“Blanche is set to appear in court Thursday for a hearing over whether the DOJ must release some unredacted Epstein documents, as well as additional documents covering unsubstantiated allegations against Trump. The DOJ has so far fought the documents’ release, though it did turn over materials to be privately reviewed by the court.”

With Blanche sworn in today to lead the DOJ, the president’s proposed scheme for immunity from tax crimes might appear to be more secure. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for him, following the recent disclosures by Capital One about why the bank had closed hundreds of bank accounts associated with Trump and his businesses.

There was also an excellent recent Wall Street Journal investigation – titled “The Boss Wants This Money” – about how Trump’s team raises money from corporate donors for his various vanity projects.

Justin Glawe and Ava Shook write at Public Notice about how “everyday Americans are forced to fund Trump’s corruption” but obviously without any quid-pro-quo.

“The nation’s largest companies are dumping cash into Trump’s various political action committees and helping to fund his ever-increasing portfolio of renovation projects in and around Washington DC. In return, those companies are benefitting from massive government contracts, favorable policy decisions from the Trump administration and the federal agencies it controls, and even Trump’s public pumping of stocks that he himself is invested in.

“The line from giving Trump money to receiving favorable treatment from his administration is straight and short, according to the Wall Street Journal.”

Glawe and Shook go on:

“The private sector money flowing into Trump’s vanity projects is also costing taxpayers. His ballroom is funded by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars as well as private donations. In this way, we’re all forced to fund Trump’s corruption.

“A Public Notice-American Doom analysis shows that Trump is spending nearly $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund his many renovation projects. Meanwhile, Trump and his family’s digital currency companies have raked in more than $2.25 billion during Trump’s second term, including as much as $600 million from foreign interests, according to Democrats. Trump’s foreign licensing business has also exploded, bringing in $61 million last year alone. Another $50 billion in taxpayer dollars has gone to government contractors who are helping to fund Trump’s ballroom, Sen. Chris Murphy said last month when he took to the Senate floor to detail Trump administration corruption.

“But the true cost to taxpayers for Trump’s construction projects — as well as the historic profiting off his presidency — are likely much higher than is currently known.”

“Truth API” – Trump’s scheme to sell early access to his often unhinged social media posts – went live and is already being challenged by Dem Rep Jamie Raskin, who called it the “depraved essence of insider trading.” Such behavior has now apparently become normalized, so it’s hardly a surprise that Trump would seek to monetize it.

Marie-Rose Sheinerman writes at The Atlantic about how ethics watchdog bodies are “racing to keep up” with the shift in scale of presidential profiteering from the first Trump term to the second.

“But perhaps the most significant category of self-dealing allegations is the one with no first-term analogue. A few days before Trump’s second inauguration, an Emirati royal backed a deal to purchase a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s primary crypto venture, for half a billion dollars. The deal, reportedly signed by Eric Trump, included $187 million up front and at least $31 million set to go toward entities linked to the family of Steve Witkoff, a lead Middle East negotiator for the administration and a co-founder of the crypto firm. A majority of the wealth that Trump has amassed this term, according to financial disclosures, comes from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses. World Liberty Financial applied for a national-trust bank charter in January and is expected to receive permission to operate like a bank in the near future, NOTUS reported this summer, a move that could give executives yet another way to direct money toward the president.”

James Downie wrote at MSNow why Democrats must make corruption one of their main focal points for November’s midterms.

Yet, he writes,

“Washington has not passed any major ethics reform in years. Even something as simple and as popular as a congressional stock ban has remained in purgatory under Democratic and Republican-controlled Congresses. And in recent decades, an increasingly conservative Supreme Court has made it harder to prosecute politicians for corruption.”

With the total US national debt scraping up on the $40 trillion mark, the ratio of debt is exceeding 100 per cent of GDP.

And amid the huge amount of money now being spent on gambling – “more on sports bets than movies, arts, museums, and music combined” according to Fortune – I wonder who might have bet on the president winning the golf tournament at his own Bedminster club?

See Also:

Call It Democracy (From June)

The Wise And Honest (From March)

Wanna Bet? (From March)

Forget The Files, Have You Seen The Dow? (From February)

Happy Birthday To Me (From February)

Tribute (From May 2025)

*

Winners And Losers

A series of significant primary elections this past week helped further shape the midterm battleground as we inch ever closer to November.

And this week there has been polling indicating that voters now trust Democrats more on the economy for the first time in a decade.

Chris Brennan at USA Today writes about the victories for progressives and some Democratic Socialists and says that while “fear is real on the Republican side of the ballot this year for a progressive surge fueled by outrage about Trump” the writer doesn’t equate progressive gains with a “Tea Party moment.”

Rather, Brennan says, the impact of progressives’ current success could be felt more in the run-up to the 2028 presidential contest.

“Which brings us to Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former Detroit public health official who won the Aug. 4 Michigan primary for the U.S. Senate with a very progressive campaign message. El-Sayed has said that he does not identify as a democratic socialist, even as President Donald Trump desperately tries to brand him as a “communist.”

“William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told me that a democratic socialist or “DSA adjacent” candidate could “move the Democratic Party significantly in their direction over the next two years.”

El-Sayed himself, meanwhile, had the perfect response to a typical Trumpian outburst of “othering” as well as a viral clip to James Matthews of Sky News:

In what will be another crucial state, Alex Isenstadt writes at Axios how Ohio is “suddenly a red-hot mess for the GOP.”

“The most immediate concern is the race in northeastern Ohio’s normally red 7th House District, where Rep. Max Miller faces allegations that he abused his ex-wife and daughter, which Miller has denied.

“Trump, who previously called the allegations a family matter, phoned Miller on Monday and expressed worries about his candidacy, three sources briefed on the call told Axios. “It’s not looking good for you,” the president told Miller, the sources said. “I’m hearing from people you’re not going to win.”

“Miller told Trump he was staying in the race.”

*

Incidentally, I was in Cleveland, Ohio for a few days last week and had a brief chance to chat to some of the always interesting community at the SABR conference and beyond, as I was travelling to and from the city, in casual conversations.

I asked a few folks what they thought was going to be the key issue for them when it came to voting in November – assuming they were going to.

Anecdotal findings suggest that people who wanted to engage on anything political – not everyone did, which I understand – mentioned first and foremost the mess of the Iran war, and its resulting impact on the economy (people just shrugged when we talked about how much money the war was costing, or what else it could be spent on); as well as the state of healthcare provision. One gentleman from Colorado said that, above all, he was deeply committed to gun rights – specifically what he called “constitutional carry”.

One guy I spoke with at the airport bar thought that “maybe having JD Vance in charge” might turn things around, but the two things people seemed prepared to agree with is that the quality of their politicians – from both major parties – is seen as woefully poor (nothing new there, to be fair) and that people just want to be left alone to live their lives and get by as best they can in difficult times.

A recent poll for CNN showed that a majority of voters surveyed say “Congress would be better off if most of its current members were unseated.” That sentiment, in itself, could be worrying for Democrats; if people are inclined to think both parties are as bad as each other, then there’s a problem with messaging.

With record low approval ratings, Trump – who after all is technically president of all Americans – should be working to shore up his base, but it seems that his ego refuses to let him rationalise the effect he personally might be having on GOP candidates.

“They’re angry at Republicans,” Trump said in an interview with Punchbowl News. “But they’re not angry at me. They’re not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans.”

And as for the guy who thought maybe VPJD might make a difference, I guess he probably doesn’t follow the Veep’s social media too closely.

See Also:

When Your Word Is Worthless

A Flailing Campaign Strategy

Delusion, Distraction, Desperation

Loser

There’s More Than One Way To Win (From February)

Vote While You Still Can (From November 2025)

***

As always, thanks for reading.

When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not expect how wildly out of whack things in the political world were about to become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for ‘normality’.

As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re just plain wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.

The two links in the above paragraphs change with each weekly column – the pieces are definitely worth reading. They’re all linked here:

During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. As you might expect, one has been relatively more sane than the other.

*

With about fifty games left, how much can any deadline trade really change how the season plays out from here?

This one, though, was no ordinary trade. When was the last time the reigning World Series champions acquired a reigning Cy Young winner? The language of the reaction, if not the transaction itself, was predictable.

As Grant Brisbee wrote at The Athletic’s wrap-up of winners and losers:

“The story is Skubal, and rightfully so. The best team in baseball got the best pitcher in baseball. Write it 100 times on a chalkboard if you’re still unsure. Nothing else matters.

“If there’s a downside to the move, it’s that the Dodgers might not get the best free agent or trade target next season. They’re going to be so disappointing, everyone. Just you wait.”

So, with the biggest move of Deadline Weekend, the Dodgers now have four of the five pitchers with the lowest ERAs since 2022, on a minimum of 50 starts – Skubal, Yamamoto, Ohtani and Snell (the fifth, obviously, is Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes. And who’s to say they won’t end up with him too, down the road?)

Potentially the Skubal move, many believe, makes the anticipated lockout even more likely at the end of this season. But as the pitcher himself said, any team could have traded for him. “Every team could make that acquisition. And I don’t really sympathize with people that blame the Dodgers for anything they’ve done.”

Mark Powell at Fansided suggested that while the Tigers were never going to keep Skubal, “trading him to the Dodgers was unnecessary and a borderline crime against baseball as we near another MLB lockout. It is also not entirely their fault.”

Ken Rosenthal writes at The Athletic how “anti-Dodger hysteria” had reached new heights.

“Yet, Skubal to the Dodgers was not a fait accompli, nor should it have been. Other contenders had big-time prospects to offer. Every team could afford the remaining $9.4 million on Skubal’s contract. How is it that the Dodgers again were the ones to step up? How is it they so often pull off these kinds of moves, even when money is not the deciding factor?

“The sport’s economic system needs addressing, no doubt. Not necessarily with a salary cap — a demand by the owners that threatens to wipe out part or all of the 2027 season — but with other ways that help benefit the small markets and allow the sport to continue its renaissance.”

And as Alden Rodriguez reports for ESPN, blowback is just something the Dodgers have gotten used to.

In what proved to be Skubal’s final start for Detroit, against the Orioles at Comerica Park last week, he had recorded his 1,000^th career strikeout, but his excellent start was later marred by the O’s biggest comeback win of the season.

The Dodgers were nine games up on Arizona at the top of the NL West as Skubal made his debut for the club in Chicago Tuesday night, looking to avoid another loss at the hands of the Cubs. Once again, Skubal’s contribution was wiped away as the Dodgers fell to their fifth-straight defeat, their longest losing streak of the season.

Ahead of the game, a small plane flew over Wrigley with a banner apparently reading “The Dodgers Ruined Baseball.” It was, admittedly, hard to tell since the banner was upside down.

Kathryn Xu wrote at Defector that “If Baseball is Ruined, Show me the Ruins.”

“Perhaps the Dodgers are accelerationists, confident in their ability to succeed in any environment and pissing everybody off for the sake of hastening the transition to one with a salary cap. Perhaps the 29 other owners in the league are content to let the Dodgers do their thing and roll over and not even try to compete, in the hope of inciting more discussion about “parity” and a salary cap and how baseball is ruined, or at least well along the process of being ruined, should they not step in and save it via a lockout.”

Of course, while Skubal might have been the highest-profile trade, he wasn’t the only one – and some were significant beyond just the implications for the rest of this season. The Baltimore Orioles sent catcher Adley Rutschman to Boston for three prospects, a back-up catcher and a PTBNL.

The idea of cutting loose the “face of the franchise” – never mind to a division rival while the O’s are technically still in the playoff picture – has frustrated fans in Charm City. Yes, they have catcher Samuel Basallo locked up until 2033/4, but this move feels like an admission that the team’s previously encouraging window for winning with the post-Covid core group just closed. Incidentally, there’s currently a half-game between the O’s and the Mariners in the Wild Card chase.

As Dan Rodricks writes at Baltimore Fishbowl, Orioles fans are exhausted from keeping their expectations in check.

“When private-equity billionaire and Baltimore native [David] Rubenstein got the team away from the Angelos family, we felt hopeful — new money, new attitude and an ambition to actually get back to the World Series. Rubenstein’s presence among fans at Oriole Park was refreshing, a far cry from the joyless John Angelos who, in the midst of the team’s 101-win 2023 season, warned us that, eventually, the Orioles would not be able to afford to keep Rutschman and other exciting young players. In other words, it was a way of saying in Baltimore we can’t have nice things.

“And never mind another World Series.

“With the Orioles, it’s always been wise to keep your expectations in check. But, held too long, low expectations become no expectations, and no expectations lead to perpetual mediocrity.”

See Also:

‘Fragile’ Baseball Stares Into An Abyss

Make Your Pitch

Faith In The Futures

Dodging The Elephant (From April 2025)

Shut Out (From August 2025)

All Change? (From July 2025)

Wings, Clipped (From May 2025)

Play Ball! (From March 2026)

*

A League Of Their Own, Again

Seventy-odd years after the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the inaugural Women’s Professional Baseball League got under way this past weekend in Springfield, Illinois.

There were plenty of connections to the past, and optimism for what’s to come.

Emily Ohman has what you need to know at The Athletic, while you can follow results and schedules, and buy tickets, at the official WPBL site.

There’s a nice interview on New Hampshire Public Radio with Beth Greenwood.

Of course, some folks probably won’t be rushing to the bleachers anytime soon – over at the Heritage Foundation, for example…

See Also:

What’s In A Name?

*

Batting Around

Bottom of the ninth, down by three, loaded up, two outs; up steps the Rocket’s kid…

And while this is admittedly funny, if not in the same league as The Pope Hat giveaway, honestly, I don’t even know where to start with this…

*

No Mistake By The Lake

I had a great time this past week at SABR54 in Cleveland. Some fascinating sessions with excellent speakers, I especially enjoyed listening to Dan Cichalski speak about Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days – From Speedball to Spitball’; as well as just getting the chance to hang out with fellow fans and catch up with my friend Ken Hornack (check out Ken’s Q&A ‘Money, It’s A Hit’ from a couple of seasons ago).

Another Cleveland friend, Marc Bona, wrote about the art exhibit that ran alongside the conference, ‘Baseball Art As The Game’s Storyteller’.

Here are some pictures I took at The Arcade, downtown, where it was great to meet and hear from artist Eric Kittelberger, who created the exhibit poster.

*

Game Notes w/e 1 August

Friday July 31: Cleveland Guardians vs Arizona Diamondbacks, Progressive Field, Cleveland, OH.

The DBacks are one of those teams that you take for granted at your peril. They’re well in this year’s playoff picture, even if they got there pretty quietly with all the attention around the division leaders.

Cleveland may have taken their eye off the ball Friday night, taking a 1-0 lead from the first frame into the eighth behind a decent outing by Tanner Bibee, and then maybe just trying to coast it out, before Arizona hit four in the penultimate inning and ruined the fireworks.

Progressive Field is probably one of the two most unnecessarily noisy ballparks I’ve ever been to (Citizens’ Bank in Philadelphia is the other). Literally every spare second is taken up with thumping “music” and at least once every inning the jumbotron yells at you to “GET LOUD” or just “SCREAM!” – with the underlying threat that someone in a costume will come and find you if you’re not enjoying yourself enough.

The Savannah Bananas probably have much to answer for. But it’s easy to blame them. I think MLB is just more conscious if little kids’ first “ball game” is the Bananas rather than an MLB team and what that means for their future audience. The kids will expect every game to have the same sort of visual and audible stimuli, which somehow translates to “excitement”.

But it was heading that way before the Bananas, who must really be rubbing their hands at the thought of a lockout next season...

Sometimes, I’d just like to go to a ballgame where the only sound is the conversation of the people around you and the occasional voice of the stadium announcer reading the lineups and who’s at the plate.

And you can always identify the SABR group, since almost everyone in the section is scoring…

Previous Game Notes for this season are here.

See Also:

Going Bananas (From May 2025)

***

As always, thanks for reading.

During the regular season I try to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. I do my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.

There’s a full States of Play archive here, and a ‘Just Baseball’ index for this season here.

Finally, if you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you, and you can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.

You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.

Here’s how it works:

You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it’s published.

The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it? And then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?

I’ll round out the other questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, as well as anything else you might like to talk about. It’ll finish up with your thoughts on where things might be headed. Obviously, you’ll get final approval before it gets posted.

Sound good? Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully see you at a ballgame.

*

The “just-says-stuff” president seems determined to outdo himself every time he steps onto a stage, but this particular line in Michigan the other day was a real doozy…

While Donald Trump may have lost his famous knack for holding an audience rapt, his ability to even pretend to address issues in a way that might be helpful to Republicans facing voters in November is markedly worsening. And he doesn’t seem to care.

Trump’s deeply unpopular conflict of choice against Iran is entering its sixth month, and there is little indication it could end anytime soon. After further US deaths and controversy over the Pentagon’s veracity in revealing the extent of casualties, together with its actual means of counting fatalities, there is also the pressing issue of how rapidly military stockpiles are being exhausted.

Following the recent bravado of congressional testimony by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, brazenly seeking billions of dollars more on top of the billions already spent on Trump’s folly, retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling wrote for The Bulwark that “Swagger isn’t a strategy.”

“Swagger may energize political supporters and produce memorable television clips, but it is not strategy. Strategy begins with a clear understanding of the enemy, realistic assessments of what military force can accomplish, and enough humility to recognize that wars rarely unfold according to plan. More than two decades after learning that lesson in southern Iraq, I still remind myself never to predict the outcome of a war while the enemy is still fighting. Secretary Hegseth and President Trump would be well served to remember that lesson today.”

The seeming lack both of options and political will on the US side was only exacerbated this week by a blockade by Houthi militants in Yemen of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait against Saudi Arabia; threatening more disruption to global energy supplies.

With France and the UK – perhaps unsurprisingly – pouring cold water on a US plan for some kind of joint naval patrol in the Strait of Hormuz, Stephen Collinson writes at CNN that “At every fork in the road on Iran, Trump’s choices get worse.”

In yet another uncertain development tonight, US and Saudi forces apparently launched joint airstrikes on Iran-backed militia targets in Iraq, following drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities.

Today, around the funeral in Washington DC of Sen Lindsey Graham, Trump met separately with Ukraine president Volodomyr Zelenskyy and Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Netanyahu encounter was likely more contentious, not just over the conduct of their joint war, but in light of Trump’s attempted nuclear cooperation deal with the Saudis, and the confusion after the US president subsequently altered the terms.

With warnings about the precedent of such a deal came concern over how it might specifically benefit his family or inner circle, hardly the first such disquiet in this self-enriching second term.

While Bret Stephens and Frank Bruni at The New York Times might debate whether anyone in the whole administration can be trusted, the notion that the word of this US president and by extension the word of the US itself, might be worse than worthless is also hardly new. Back in Trump’s first term – indeed, on the administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA – Roger Cohen wrote at The New York Times that:

“America has made a mockery of the value of its signature on an international agreement. The world will take note.”

Now, Noah Berlatsky argues that through governance by whim and meme, Trump has basically made the word of the US government worthless; while Liz Dye wrote of the president’s latest tariff policy – sorry, whim – that it’s “not really a trade strategy so much as a demonstration that no American commitment is durable past the next mood swing.”

Even if some Republicans may be trying to distance themselves from a deeply unpopular leader – with the blessing of his advisers, apparently – they all appear to be resigned to what one party operative told MS Now:

“The understanding is pretty damn implicit: The president is going to say what the president is going to say.”

‘Twas ever thus.

See Also:

Delusion, Distraction, Desperation

The Big Deal That Wasn’t

The Brain Fog Of War

The Stone Age, You Say? (From April)

The Only Restraint Is ‘My Own Morality’ (From January)

Some Men Just Want To Watch The World Burn (From April 2025)

*

A Flailing Campaign Strategy

After getting nowhere by angrily – and pointlessly – demanding that Senate GOP leader John Thune keep the chamber in session specifically to pass the SAVE America Act, the president again turned his attention to restricting mail-in voting, asking the Supreme Court to allow his Executive Order restrictions to stand ahead of the polls in November.

The White House has repeatedly claimed, without significant evidence, that mail-in voting increases the risk of voter fraud.

As Paul Waldman wrote recently at Public Notice:

“Just as there are only so many times you can hear Trump say “It’s like nothing anyone has seen before” before the hyperbole loses all meaning, yet another allegation that elections are being stolen no longer registers as revelatory or urgent. That’s especially true when Republicans have worked so hard for so many years to prove that voter fraud is organized and widespread, with an enormous amount of time, effort, and money spent by the entire conservative movement, yet have come up with essentially nothing.”

With the depths of his polling continuing to outdo all of his predecessors, even Richard Nixon, if Trump can’t earn votes, he seems determined simply to eliminate them.

But even Fox News polls are indicating that maybe the president might want to think twice about mocking “affordability”, which he does with relentless repetition now.

Meanwhile, the president goes out of his way to – if not outright rewrite history – then certainly to let people know that they shouldn’t trust their own eyes or ability to reason.

With the nomination of Troy Jackson seemingly closing the loop on a troubled Democratic Senate primary in Maine, it allowed the Midcoast Villager to roll out this excellent, and timely, hed.

But all’s not been smooth sailing for Democrats this week, with Republicans seeking to grab onto the emergence of the Democratic Socialists of America and their Workers Deserve More platform to prise open splits in the opposition.

In next week’s significant Michigan Senate primary, Rep Haley Stevens appears to be polling better than Abdul El-Sayed against the Republican nominee, despite her somewhat unconventional approach to answering constituents’ questions.

Meanwhile in Texas, what we all knew would be a fascinating race of contrasts is developing in one of the most closely-watched states.

And hey, can you guess what the top issue is?

See Also:

Call It Democracy

Get Out The Map (From May)

There’s More Than One Way To Win (From February)

Vote While You Still Can (From November 2025)

*

This Should Be The Last Time, Maybe The Last Time, I Don’t Know…

The president’s re-arranged appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner literally came this close to Father Ted’s grudge-laden acceptance of the Golden Cleric.

As Tom Jones wrote at Poynter, the dinner was an embarrassment.

Jeet Heer wrote at The Nation that [Trump’s] “speech was racist, homophobic, vindictive, and soul-crushingly unfunny—and the journalists in the crowd didn’t seem to care.”

Jocelyn Noveck at the AP called it a “rambling, insult-filled speech”.

“Earlier, Trump had entered the ballroom to polite applause, and was thanked for his support by outgoing White House Correspondents’ Association president Weijia Jiang of CBS News. After dinner, he then sat through more than an hour of awards presentations.

“One of the winners, Tyler Pager of the New York Times, was in fact one of the reporters who had been subpoenaed by Trump’s Justice Department over his reporting about Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet. Those subpoenas were withdrawn on Thursday in a New York courtroom — just one of the arenas where the president, in his second term, has been seeking to control media coverage that displeases him.”

In other media news, the proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery will not, now, take place before the midterm elections, following a judge’s move to pause the closing of the deal.

In an essay on the “destruction of media consolidation limits” Karl Bode wrote about how “Local U.S. TV News Will Soon Be Entirely Right Wing Propaganda.”

“With scattered exception, Democrats have been a feckless disaster when it comes to media policy and reform. Not only have they not had a cogent media reform plan anytime in the last quarter-century, establishment dems can’t even effectively communicate the fact that there’s an information war going on.

“A war in which journalism, education, science, and informed consensus are losing, badly. Most Democrats can be found paying empty lip service to journalism before rubber stamping the next terrible merger, and traditionally have treated competent media regulation as a droll and unnecessary afterthought.”

Meanwhile, on another important legal front…

and elsewhere..

*

Jay Clayton was confirmed today as Director of National Intelligence.

The man Clayton is replacing, Acting Director Bill Pulte, boasted about a further round of job cuts – “an approximately 30% Staff Reduction from Weeks Ago.”

*

Finally, some context surrounding the Los Angeles Dodgers’ visit to the White House last week.

See Also:

Dodger Fans Play Hardball

Piggies, Seditionists And Symbols Of Hate (From November 2025)

***

As always, thanks for reading.

When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not expect how wildly out of whack things in the political world were about to become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for ‘normality’.

As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re just plain wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.

The two links in the above paragraphs change with each weekly column – the pieces are definitely worth reading. They’re all linked here:

During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. As you might expect, one has been relatively more sane than the other.

*

With the All-Star tents folded for another year – after the first-ever ASG in which half the outs were strikeouts – could it possibly be “game over” for the midsummer classic?

Among others, sportswriter Buster Olney believes the status of MLB’s showpiece is “in a fragile state.” Brandon Contes at Awful Announcing wrote:

“Olney noted the growing issue of players either declining an invite to the All-Star Game or becoming ineligible because they pitched for their regular team in the preceding days. It begs the question of whether All-Star Games can still be considered “All-Star” if the stars aren’t showing up to compete.

“In this All-Star Game, Jacob Misiorowski, the guy everyone wants to see, he didn’t pitch. Paul Skenes didn’t pitch,” Olney lamented. “Cam Schlittler, Aaron Judge was not there. Shohei Ohtani was not there. Citizens Bank Park last night, a third of the stands had cleared out by the eighth inning. That is a concern for baseball to address.”

Two of the game’s best pitchers, hometown favorite Zack Wheeler and Detroit’s back-to-back AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, faced each other the day before the ASG, inevitably overshadowing the All-Star Futures Game, which surely, as a vote of confidence in the talent pipeline, has always deserved more prominent coverage as part of the ASG break.

But, as Olney says, those are all things for MLB to think about as they hopefully try to avoid greed destroying their golden goose before next spring. For now, fans’ attention turns to whatever excitement is left in the second half of this season; as well as the looming uncertainty of next, driven by the seemingly intractable divide between owners and players over a salary cap.

MLB – somewhat optimistically perhaps – this week released the schedule for the 2027 season, but as Jeff Passan wrote:

“In conversations with more than two dozen league and union officials and players at the All-Star Game this week, none expressed optimism that the trajectory of discussions between the parties would yield a deal to keep the league from locking out players when the current basic agreement lapses Dec. 1. The parties’ stances are so far apart, in fact, that multiple sources told ESPN they would not be surprised if the sides do not exchange any further core economics proposals between now and then.”

When I was at the Futures’ Game in Philadelphia, I had a nice, random conversation with a guy in the outdoor viewing area, where the screens were split between whatever was happening on the field behind us and at the Phils’ game that afternoon in Detroit. He was mid-30s, chatty, friendly disposition – and was wearing a badge identifying him as autistic.

He saw that I’d been keeping score and he asked if I was with MLB (I was wearing a regular shirt and khakis, rather than a team jersey, so maybe he thought I was “working”). I told him I wasn’t, nevertheless he asked if I knew how he could get to talk to the Commissioner.

I suggested that maybe he could email or write to him, but I think he wanted me to somehow produce Rob Manfred the way Woody Allen produces Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall. Honestly, though, whatever he was so desperate to say couldn’t be any more outlandish or potentially destructive than any scenario the Commish is likely to preside over in the months to come.

We talked for another couple of minutes before he moved on with a smile. Everyone has a story and I love chatting with anyone who shows up at a ball game. That’s why it was good to hear that Wrigley Field, the home of next year’s All-Star Game (assuming there is one), has become the first MLB ballpark to be designated a certified autism center.

On the other hand, though, this is probably not such a wholesome reflection on The Friendly Confines…

This is Hall of Fame Weekend, with the induction on Sunday of the Class of 2026 – Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent – and then we barrel headlong into the August 3 trade deadline.

There are, frankly, more than enough crises in the real world, at home and abroad, to render whatever might happen to the nation’s pastime in the short-to-medium term anything more than a mere distraction. Mark Bulgutch wrote recently at the Toronto Star that baseball “…is such a good game, that it may survive even the worst that those running and playing it can do to abuse it.”

Hopefully, he’s right. Mind you, he describes himself as “still grieving the death of the Montreal Expos,” so maybe we never really get away from some pain.

See Also:

Faith In The Futures

Make Your Pitch

Shut Out (From August 2025)

Halfway Home (From July 2025)

**

Dodger Fans Play Hardball

“Jackie Robinson has to be tired of rolling over in his grave,” wrote Carron J Phillips at The Contrarian, after the World-Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers visited the White House on Wednesday, saying that “The franchise has gone from taking a stand against ICE to bending the knee in submission to this administration’s corruption.”

The Dodgers made the same visit last year, shortly after the Trump administration had attempted to erase the story of Jackie Robinson’s military service in a “DEI purge”. And, like last year, some of their fans have been angered by the spectacle.

“Renowned Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke questioned how a franchise that was built on a diverse and immigrant-heavy fan base would make such a decision not once, but twice. “The president has treated the Dodgers fans with a careless disregard for their basic humanity, and the Dodgers need to let him know this is not OK,” he wrote earlier this month, pleading for the team to reverse their decision.

“Even though multiple championship teams have trekked to the White House in Trump’s second term, the spinelessness of the Dodgers’ decisions highlights a different level of culpability.”

Like last year, some star players were missing, notably Mookie Betts and Kiké Hernández, while minority owner Magic Johnson was also conspicuous by his absence.

If it’s any consolation, the Dodgers weren’t the only MLB team that the president co-opted for his own image purposes this week. When he appeared at a rally in Marietta, Georgia, he brought onstage former Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker and team development executive Mike Plant, while encouraging the crowd to do the “tomahawk chop”.

See Also:

Dodging The Elephant (From April 2025)

Safe At Home (From April 2026)

Dodgers Stun Rogers (From November 2025)

Brave New World (From May 2026)

*

Sox Streak Snapped

Reports the AP:

“The last time the Boston Red Sox won 15 straight games, Ted Williams was putting together an MVP season in 1946 and leading them to an American League championship.

“On Wednesday, the Red Sox matched that streak from 80 years ago, beating the Baltimore Orioles 6-3 in the opener of a doubleheader.

“The streak ended hours later when they dropped the nightcap 5-1.”

*

What’s in a Name?

The inaugural season of the Women’s Professional Baseball League gets under way next month and details have been unveiled of its original four teams: the Boston Hunters, the Los Angeles Queens, the New York Heights, and the San Francisco Firebells.

Meanwhile this week:

*

Pitchers and Fielders

*

It was a week to remember the Moon landing so, inevitably, to also remember the famous Gaylord Perry story…

See Also:

Moon’s Haunted (From April)

*

Finally, there were two losses for the wider world of baseball in recent days…

Duane Ward, a closer on the Toronto Blue Jays’ back-to-back World Series teams, passed away aged just 62. He was in Toronto for a celebration of the 1992 and 1993 titles. A team statement called him “one of the most accomplished and beloved relievers in franchise history.”

Elsewhere, the death was announced of Youman Wilder, a Harlem youth baseball coach who hit the headlines last summer after protecting his players from ICE agents.

See Also:

‘I’m Willing To Die To Make Sure You Get Home’ (From July 2025)

**

Game Notes w/e 24 July

Friday 24 July; Baltimore Orioles vs Atlanta Braves, Camden Yards, Baltimore MD.

It was the first night of Hawaiian Shirt weekend at the ballpark – the annual giveaway that brings in the crowds but must be a nightmare for the security staff in telling people apart.

It was a beautiful evening for a game and we got a good, back-and-forth contest that could have gone either way. In the end it went the way of Atlanta on the back of a three-run Matt Olson home run in the 10^th inning – his 27^th of the season.

On the night when the O’s celebrated Kyle Bradish’s contract extension, their starter Trevor Rogers looked very good early and picked up some much-needed run support, but found himself getting dinged from the fourth inning on.

As Tyler Young wrote at Camden Chat:

“The goodness in this game was largely contained to two players: Rogers and Encarnacion-Strand. Rogers is back to being an ace. That’s good news for the Orioles. Their either have a dependable arm for the final two months of the season, or they have one of the most attractive trade chips in the sport. Encarnacion-Strand is playing himself into being the team’s everyday third baseman, at least for right now. They need help scoring runs, and he’s making it happen. Keep playing him until he proves otherwise.

“The bad was much more widely shared. The Orioles went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position and left 10 runners on base. It’s nearly impossible to win with numbers like that, and they happen far too frequently for this crew.”

Previous Game Notes for this season are here.

***

As always, thanks for reading.

During the regular season I try to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. I do my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.

There’s a full States of Play archive here, and a ‘Just Baseball’ index for this season here.

*

Finally, if you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you, and you can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.

You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.

Here’s how it works:

You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it’s published.

The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it? And then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?

I’ll round out the other questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, as well as anything else you might like to talk about. It’ll finish up with your thoughts on where things might be headed. Obviously, you’ll get final approval before it gets posted.

Sound good? Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully see you at a ballgame.

*

On a night when America was increasingly embroiled in a hugely unpopular war, when the air in some of its major cities was unbreathable and the spectre of explosive diarrhea stalked the land, the president made his personal contribution to a toxic environment by regurgitating bitter, debunked grievances about his election defeat six years ago.

In a much-hyped primetime address on national television – or at least some of national television – Donald Trump doubled down as expected, claiming “foreign interference”, specifically by China, had somehow led him to lose to Joe Biden.

Yet documents released by the White House ostensibly to support such theories indicated only that Russia had attempted to interfere – on Trump’s behalf – something Trump has repeatedly called a “hoax”.

As the AP reported:

“No credible intelligence has emerged showing that the vote count in 2020 was manipulated by foreign actors. Repeated audits and reviews -- many run by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general -- have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.

“Even if substantiated, Trump’s claims did not amount to conduct that would have altered the outcome of any race, let alone the 2020 race for the White House.”

The address itself was classic late-era Trump: disjointed, disconnected from truth in a way that made him appear semi-hinged, almost Queeg-like.

What Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls Trump’s “obsession with undoing his 2020 defeat” now appears, ludicrously, to be an integral part of the GOP strategy for the upcoming midterm elections, even with the party projected to suffer heavily. Yet still no-one among the Republican hierarchy will say enough is enough.

“The Big Lie is back because Trump has a psychological and practical need to “prove” that his devastating loss never happened, because the election was rigged against him. The desire to undo the reality of his rejection by American voters has translated now into an all-hands-on-deck approach: rerouting the business of governance to satisfy his need for vengeance and the creation of an alternate reality he can live with.”

While facts and a Trumpian alternate reality are rare bedfellows, the purpose of the president’s attack was more about undermining voters’ confidence in the electoral process and damaging faith in honest outcomes before a vote is even cast in November. Through dire warnings about how vulnerable elections could be, he creates a pretext for stepping in to “protect” them under a banner of “integrity”; once again claiming that the SAVE America Act is the only thing that can rescue the country – sorry, his presidency.

As Tom Nichols wrote at The Atlantic, the president’s performance “did more damage to American elections than China.”

“[Trump] called the current situation a “crisis” and vowed to prevent any future elections from being “stolen.” He directed the public to a website where people can peruse documents that he says prove not only that bad actors have influenced U.S. elections, but that all of this was kept from him by “deep state” malefactors during his first term.”

What Trump described as “shocking” claims were quickly dismissed as, at best, old news. Nevertheless, next morning his recently-appointed Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin tripled down on allegations about non-citizen voting, saying the administration could withdraw funding from states which fail to comply with federal government demands for state voter rolls, even threatening to jail local election officials.

“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said.

With Mullin locked in, Trump’s address followed a further round of public loyalty tests for other law-enforcement members of his inner circle, with confirmation hearings this week for Attorney General nominee, Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche, and, more embarrassingly, the latest nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton.

At this stage, perhaps the only thing Clayton has going for him is that he’s not Bill Pulte.

Clayton was pressed on the recent subpoenas of New York Times reporters after the White House flipped out over the debacle of Trump’s flying gift from Qatar.

As Ruth Marcus argues at The New Yorker, it’s the latest ratcheting-up of Trump’s personal war on journalists.

“Trump appears to be moving from the unsettling rhetoric that began during the 2016 election (“scum,” “enemy of the American people”) to his long-promised assault. He has continued to file a barrage of defamation lawsuits—with some news organizations choosing to capitulate rather than risk harm to planned mergers or broadcast licenses. Trump is also now harnessing the processes of criminal law to intimidate and punish.”

After a life of media exposure in which television gave Trump the visibility to create a persona where politics became a natural step, he at least should understand how to keep an audience engaged and rewarded. But this week’s speech just proved that he’s out of ideas. As Hayes Brown writes:

“Television writers used to run into this problem all the time, back when sitcoms required 22 episodes every season. There are only so many outrageous situations and wacky miscommunications that a series can sustain after several seasons. But after a few seasons, when enough episodes had aired, writers could occasionally take a break from churning out fresh work in favor of the humble clip show.”

This time, Trump knows he’s in real danger of not being renewed.

See Also:

Call It Democracy

The Big Deal That Wasn’t

Slopaganda

Crisis, Chaos And Corruption (From April)

The Wise And Honest (From March)

‘The Easy Way Or The Hard Way?’ (From September 2025)

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“One Hundred Per Cent Preventable”?

Protests against ICE have continued in Maine after the killing this week of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old husband and father, who was apparently not the “intended target” of an immigration enforcement operation.

Former wives of the ICE agent alleged to have carried out the shooting have spoken out. Together, their chilling statements have – at the very least – raised serious questions over the agency’s vetting procedures and rapid hiring process.

The Maine shooting followed the killing in Houston, Texas, of a 52-year-old grandfather, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was also described as “not an intended target”.

After DHS chief Markwayne Mullin paused ICE traffic stops, Donald Trump, apparently fearing any appearance of weakness, quickly reversed the decision.

Bill Kristol wrote at The Bulwark:

“There’s no reason to think there’ll be any kind of fundamental change to this thuggish and lawless agency, or to the mass deportation agenda that incentivizes and excuses its thuggish and lawless behavior. In fact, all evidence now points to things staying the same.”

This, also, is quite the headline:

ICE is now funded through the end of Trump’s presidential term – yet clearly the huge budget still isn’t enough to provide working body cameras for every agent – raising fears over accountability and oversight, especially surrounding a potentially contentious election and its aftermath.

Despite cases brought against people for “assaulting or impeding” federal agents apparently crumbling, according to The New York Times, there have inevitably been concerns over how law enforcement resources might be deployed; particularly after another NYT report suggested that federal agents have now been told the FBI would no longer investigate confrontations with immigration agents.

After Donald Trump used a speech at Mount Rushmore to stoke a new “red scare”, and the White House ramped up its “campaign to crush radical left terrorism” it’s no coincidence that House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke this week about the country being in a “battle” against Marxism, while Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller appeared at a conference organised by the State Department to warn of a “resurgence of far-left political violence.”

Yes, it’s exhausting, but with Democratic Socialists’ recent success in Democratic party primaries, ordinary Americans can probably expect more of this as November approaches.

See Also:

Rats In A Sack (From January)

For Good? (From January)

ICE Agents Fatally Shoot Man in Minneapolis (From January)

Pretext And Provocation, With Little Pretense (From January)

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Where’s Mitch?

The GOP continues to struggle with health issues, but for once they’re not Donald Trump’s.

Following the unexpected death of prominent Trump critic-turned-acolyte Sen Lindsey Graham, attention has focused on the whereabouts and status of Sen Mitch McConnell, who was reportedly hospitalized and has not been seen in public since June 14.

The Governor of Kentucky, Democrat Andy Beshear, wrote to McConnell last week requesting an update on his health and ability to serve, but has apparently yet to receive an official response. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Beshear “hinted that he would challenge the state’s 2024 law that allows him to call a special election to fill a vacant seat, but forbids him from naming a replacement should there be a vacancy.”

There are, obviously, significant implications for the GOP’s agenda if the longest-serving party leader in the history of the Senate is unable to resume his role, and Republican colleagues appear to be split over next steps.

Sen Josh Hawley told Fox News: “at a certain point you do have an obligation to your constituents and the country to tell them what’s going on.”

David A Graham writes at The Atlantic about how a lack of credible information inevitably leads to conspiracies – because of course, the last thing we all need is more conspiracies.

Paul Waldman wrote at Public Notice about McConnell’s “legacy of destruction.”

“McConnell was an extremely shrewd and effective backroom operator, especially when he was in the opposition and deployed his considerable skills and creativity to the project of obstruction. In fact, almost everything about how the contemporary Republican Party operates in Congress — its aversion to solving problems, its destruction of the norms that used to allow the institution to operate, its embrace of chaos and dysfunction — can be at least partly attributed to McConnell.

“To be generous, there were moments when he displayed glimmers of morality, especially when offering criticisms of Donald Trump’s worst abuses. It’s to his credit that Trump never liked him. But again and again, those moments proved fleeting, and McConnell became Trump’s most important enabler.

“Unlike the backbench MAGA cheerleaders whose enthusiasm never waned, McConnell actually had the power to determine whether Trump’s corruption and attack on American democracy would continue — and he always made the wrong choice.”

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Fast Bucks

The Treasury’s new dollar coin bearing Donald Trump’s face was unveiled on Wednesday. According to NPR, “A coin with the sitting president’s face has only been minted once, exactly a century ago. And, experts say, it’s likely illegal.”

The Treasury is also pressing ahead with plans for a $250 bill bearing Trump’s likeness, also under the guise of marking the nation’s semiquincentennial.

Trump’s teleprompter operator allegedly made enough to buy 100,000 of the coins by betting on what the president would say. But that’s probably small potatoes compared with the potential for Truth Social to sell faster access to Trump’s social media posts. In terms of data integrity, how exactly is that different from selling posts containing exactly what investors want to hear?

Ironically, the president who came to office promising to drain the swamp has had to settle for draining the Reflecting Pool – again.

The latest issue the president has “fixated” on, according to Politico (because it’s not like he has other stuff going on) has been changing how time works. The latest move to have “permanent Daylight Saving Time” passed this House this week.

America has tried it before, in the 1970s, and it didn’t work; but that could be where the president got the idea.

Donald Trump finally paid E Jean Carroll more than $5million, three years after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The money was ordered to be turned over to Carroll earlier this month, after the Supreme Court denied Trump’s bid to hear his appeal.

Staff working on VP JD Vance’s security detail are apparently fed up with the second family’s personal travel requests. Yes, that would be the guy who’s technically in change of rooting out fraud and waste in government.

Not wanting to be left out of the weekly ridicule round-up as the war in Iran gets more perilous by the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans to test troops for “low testosterone levels”.

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President Trump and Fifa boss Gianni Infantino were loudly booed as they came onto the field after today’s World Cup Final between Spain and Argentina at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.

For the presentation to the victorious Spanish side, they were accompanied by the leaders of the other co-hosts, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Mark Carney of Canada. But of course, neither of the other co-hosts remained awkwardly on the platform with the winning team before Infantino had to usher them away.

See Also:

The Billion Dollar Ballroom (From May)

The Wise And Honest (From March)

Happy Birthday To Me (From February)

**

‘If he couldn’t draw, he’d be an assassin’

Finally this week, the death was announced of Pat Oliphant, one of the most important political cartoonists of the modern age.

David Von Drehle wrote at The Washington Post:

“Perhaps more than any other commentator, he defined his times. Nixon was a gangster in pinstripes; Jimmy Carter a munchkin-sized nonentity; Ronald Reagan a movie star lost in his own imaginings; George H.W. Bush a purse-toting old woman; Bill Clinton a carnival barker. Oliphant could be cruel. He could be vulgar. He was criticized at times for drawings interpreted as racist, sexist, homophobic.

“There is no safety net for editorial cartoonists. No “on the other hand,” no “to be sure,” no “in fairness it must be said.” A safe cartoon is usually a bad cartoon, because the whole idea is to have a strong point of view.”

*

Relatedly, today is the last day of this exhibit showcasing the work of two of the best political cartoonists currently working, who are often featured here, Mike Luckovich and Nick Anderson.

***

As always, thanks for reading.

When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not expect how wildly out of whack things in the political world were about to become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for ‘normality’.

As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re just plain wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.

The two links in the above paragraphs change with each weekly column – the pieces are definitely worth reading. They’re all linked here:

During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. As you might expect, one has been relatively more sane than the other.

*

A big week for baseball in the US and for sports fans all over the world.

That includes the two Mets fans on my 7am train from Baltimore, who were shipping up to Boston for their Sunday afternoon game at Fenway. One of them was even wearing a Pete Alonso jersey, which kind of seems like rubbing salt in your own wound. I felt for them.

Unlike them, I wasn’t going to the end of the line but was getting off in Philadelphia to go to the All-Star Futures Game at Citizens Bank Park, as this year’s festivities crank into high gear leading up to this evening’s Midsummer Classic.

Mostly, I enjoy the All-Star break and particularly the Futures Game. This was my third in person, the previous ones being in New York in 2013 and in Cleveland six years later. Even though the pitchers tend to cycle through quickly, a lot of the minor league stars you’ll see in these games go on to be high-profile household names down the road.

Showcasing the talent in baseball’s pipeline, Saturday night had kicked things off with the fourth annual HBCU Swingman Classic, - featuring 50 of the top NCAA Division I players from HBCU programs – which ended 6-1 to the American League.

Sunday’s Futures Game, with the teams managed by two Phillies legends – Larry Bowa and Shane Victorino – wound up with the same winner by the same scoreline.

Keith Law at The Athletic breaks down the individual performances, concluding: “…Most hitters didn’t do anything of note, which is common for this game. The pitchers are all throwing so hard that even a final score of 6-1 feels like a slugfest.”

Following the Futures Game, there was what seemed to be a chaotic mini-Home Run Derby off what looked like the bottom half of a bouncy castle, under the banner of a 3-on-3 contest. I’m honestly not sure if it worked or not. I guess we’ll find out if it’s back next year.

Part of the problem was that the Phillies were playing in Detroit that afternoon, with Zack Wheeler going against Tarik Skubal, and a lot of fans had gravitated out to the screens in the open-air viewing areas to watch. In the end that was a good move, as the Phils notched their 15th shutout of the season, likely strengthening Don Mattingly’s hold on the manager’s job.

The other element of All-Star Week that focuses on the game’s expected future stars is of course the MLB Draft. With the opening selection, the Chicago White Sox picked UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky, who subsequently signed for the highest signing bonus in draft history. Each year, the draft has those moments where you inevitably hear a distinctive surname and wonder “is he related to…?”

Kiley McDaniel at ESPN has an overview of all 30 teams and how they fared.

With such a focus during this week by MLB on youth and player development, especially with the host ballclub’s usual contribution to their local community, it seems a shame to read that not everyone feels included.

See Also:

All Stars, All The Time

For The Ages (From April)

Hey Now, You’re Not (From July 2025)

Halfway Home (From July 2025)

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World At Their Feet

While there has been plenty of – separate – attention on baseball’s stars of the future and established superstars, football’s World Cup brings both together with this week’s mouthwatering semi-finals.

Lamine Yamal wears number 19 for Spain and just celebrated his 19^th birthday as probably the most exciting young player on the world stage. This afternoon, he lines up against France and 27-year-old Kylian Mbappé – widely thought of as the planet’s best player of the current moment. As Ben Gray writes for Fansided, between them they are ushering in a “new era of world soccer” that they’ll dominate for the next few years.

The beautiful irony of this classic semi-final line-up is that in the other game, Argentina’s legendary Lionel Messi, having turned 39 last month, is making what could be his last-ever World Cup appearance, should the reigning champions lose to England and their own golden child, the inspirational 23-year-old Jude Bellingham.

All the teams in the semis are previous winners of the tournament, but England’s wait since their only victory has notoriously been the longest of the four – now sixty years of hurt. Having said that, they haven’t had a player like Bellingham for a good many of those years, and in tandem with brilliant warhorse Harry Kane and orchestrated by German manager Thomas Tuchel, he could prove to be the decisive factor in this campaign.

But there’s always the possibility England could get ahead of themselves, because, of course that never happens.

The winners of the semis today and tomorrow meet in Sunday’s Final.

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Batting Around

Verlander calls it a career

Justin Verlander, the three-time Cy Young Award winner, two-time World Series champion and 2011 AL MVP announced he would retire at the end of the season. The announcement came shortly after he was added to the AL All-Star roster as a “legend pick”.

Tyler Kepner wonders at The Athletic if the 300-win club is “now closed forever” and does that really matter? He concludes:

“Randy Johnson was the last pitcher to win 300, getting there in 2009 and finishing with 303 victories. Verlander won’t reach that peak, but will anyone who follows come as close to him as he is to Johnson? It’s hard to imagine.

“In the end, Verlander never needed to keep pushing for 300 to rank among the legends.”

*

He may not be pitching in tonight’s All-Star Game, but Shohei Ohtani hit his 300^th career homer last week.

Meanwhile…

*

As Scott Merkin wrote at MLB.com, it takes a lot to push Munetaka Murakami out of the top story about the Chicago White Sox right now – especially as he returned from injury after 35 games – but his teammate Tristan Peters did just that…

Peters subsequently was selected to join the AL All-Star squad, replacing the A’s Nick Kurtz. He’s the first former Savannah Banana to make an All-Star Game roster, which I guess kind of puts MLB’s Home Run Derby in some kind of perspective.

It doesn’t seem like they’ve replaced Kurtz’s banner in Philadelphia though…

See Also:

Divine Intervention

Going Bananas (From May 2025)

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This week of all weeks, Phillies’ All-Star Bryce Harper attempted to clear up the delicate situation around his involvement with a FanDuel customer dating back to 2024, saying that the online gambling site used a video he had recorded without his permission.

See Also:

Which Pastime, Exactly? (From November 2025)

Hustle (From May 2025)

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Hot Stuff

I was archiving some photos this past week and came across this one from 2023, which I saved because of how the headline was presented. Important story, sure, you can tell from its placement, but how many times do you see the word “cataclysmic” in a hed? And where do you go from there? (I noticed that in the subsequent online version, “cataclysmic” was changed to “catastrophic” but I’m not sure that makes me feel any better.)

The story did seem particularly apt when I got home from Philadelphia on Sunday evening. With another heat dome out West moving East this week it was very, very hot at the ballpark during the height of the afternoon on Sunday.

Towards the end of the Futures Game I left my seat in the exposed upper deck to go down and find some shade. As I was cooling off, a guy about ten years older than me stopped nearby to catch his breath. He was clearly in distress and his partner was concerned. I asked if they wanted me to go alert an usher and they said yes. I went to find an usher and he told me to talk directly to the security staff (the ushers don’t have radios).

Two security guys responded quickly and followed me back to where the man was recovering from what looked like heatstroke and they suggested they call for help for him. It was probably better safe than sorry, but I am sure that wasn’t the only heat-related incident at the park that day.

Increasingly as we all go to ballgames, we’ll be subject to the effects of weather and we’ll all need to be more conscious of the risks, even if this doesn’t end up happening.

That’s why this was something of a refreshing shift, and even though he’s not an All-Star, the Angels’ Brent Suter is my MVP this time around.

See Also:

High Heat (From June 2025)

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In a devastating story from Venezuela, the recent earthquake left more than 100 youth baseball players dead.

MLB and MLBPA donated $1million to the Red Cross to help with recovery work.

Players and their families have certainly been affected emotionally.

Detroit rookie Eduardo Valencia became the tenth Tigers player to homer in their first MLB at-bat.

But the loss of the kids is surely the hardest blow of all.

See Also:

Just Let Us Be Happy (From Jan 2026)

Felicidades! (From March 2026)

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Whatever’s left of it by then…

Finally, the Los Angeles Dodgers said the team will visit the White House on July 23. The team had previously said they would arrange the visit for later in the year.

Kiké Hernández won’t be going. Neither, it seems, will Mookie Betts.

See Also:

Dodging The Elephant (From April 2025)

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Tickets, Please…

You can read about these games and the others I went to in the 2022 season - including a World Series game in Philadelphia, here.

**

Game Notes w/e 12 July

I mentioned in a previous post that we got married on July 4 – and that our first date nine years previously had been at an Orioles-Cubs game at Camden Yards. We went back last week and I need to shout-out the O’s ticket window staff, who very efficiently helped me deal with a problem with my MLB Ballpark app so we could get into the game.

*

Tuesday 7 July: Baltimore Orioles vs Chicago Cubs, Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD.

The Cubs won 5-2 behind a solid outing from Matthew Boyd.

*

Wednesday 8 July: Baltimore Orioles vs Chicago Cubs, Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD.

After the O’s jumped out to a 3-1 lead, this turned into a good back and forth game that really could have gone either way. Both teams struggled in relief and the Cubs almost squandered their lead late.

Cubs eventually won 9-7 behind a couple of key homers from PCA and Seiya Suzuki.

The O’s Tarps Off crew took over the section at the end of the upper deck.

See Also:

Make Your Pitch

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Thursday 9 July: Baltimore Orioles vs Chicago Cubs, Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD.

O’s pitcher Trevor Rogers’ record going into this game was 6-7. One for the kids, I guess.

The game was brought forward by five hours for a lunchtime start because of expected severe weather later – probably a sound decision, but the timing was near-perfect as the O’s won 3-2 to avoid the sweep, and Christian Faith Night was cancelled as a storm of biblical proportions broke over the ballpark.

*

Sunday 12 July: All-Star Futures Game, NL vs AL, Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, PA.

***

As always, thanks for reading.

During the regular season I try to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. I do my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.

There’s a full States of Play archive here, and a ‘Just Baseball’ index for this season here.

*

Finally, if you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you, and you can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.

You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.

Here’s how it works:

You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it’s published.

The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it? And then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?

I’ll round out the other questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, as well as anything else you might like to talk about. It’ll finish up with your thoughts on where things might be headed. Obviously, you’ll get final approval before it gets posted.

Sound good? Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully see you at a ballgame.

*

I was part of a beautiful wedding on the Fourth of July in Western Pennsylvania.

There was friendship and food; laughter, poetry, songs, three generations of family and a dog in a tuxedo. It was perfect.

Last year I wrote a little, at the end of a baseball post here, about how my now-wife and I arrived at this point and what the Chicago Cubs had to do with it.

In our small way, in this room full of love, it felt like we were clawing back some joy from the malevolent circus that is happening every single day in the nation’s capital. Needless to say, we tried not to let any of that impose on the occasion; and there were only passing references to “turbulent” times.

But we’d be wrong to deny that it has partly been the uncertainty – domestic and global – of the past decade that helped bring us together as older, like-minded Americans; clinging to our mutual hope that what is happening around us has been an outlier of insanity, rather than a set path for the rest of the way.

We’re sure we’re not the only ones.

While America’s 250^th birthday would always be inevitably drenched in history, as A.O. Scott wrote for The New York Times; Megan Houser at The Contrarian argued that it was above all a day for “celebrating the defiant pulse of the living.” She concludes:

“I’ve found myself thinking lately of a poem by Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me.” After limning what it is to be a Black woman in this country, the speaker ends with a fierce invocation to celebrate the fact that, every day of her life: “something has tried to kill me / and has failed.”

“That’s enough to celebrate this July Fourth. And we have much more. The forces of dull, narrow imagination and greed have failed to take this opportunity for joy and reflection from us (however much they muddle the Reflecting Pool), just as they have failed to take our future. They are the ones passing through and away.”

Nevertheless, Phillips O’Brien sounded a pragmatic note of realism that couldn’t help but cut through the pretense that we are all, in fact, alike, the way we thought we were growing up. He asks: “Can Americans Become Americans Again?”

“There is a good deal of sentimental drivel being thrown around this year about how Americans desperately want to come together, how they still share more in common than not, and how there remains a shared ideal of Americanness.

“America is divided in such a profound and destructive way that, I believe, it can be said that Americans no longer see themselves as Americans. They have stronger allegiances which govern how they see both themselves and how they see the world. Only if Americans admit that and really try to become “Americans” again, can the country come out of the terrible state it is now.

“Something deeply depressing has happened over the last few decades as the country has ceased to share an idea of what the US is or for what it stands. It has instead balkanized into two camps, and loyalty to your camp is far more important than any shared national vision.”

Social media, certainly, has helped accelerate that schism, and I’ve often pointed to how Jonathan Haidt articulated it brilliantly in a 2022 piece for The Atlantic entitled “Why The Past Ten Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.”

Haidt writes:

“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”

But deep down, I want to throw my lot in with Nick Kristof’s sense of “battered hope” when in The New York Times this week he asks the basic question “Can the United States hold on?” He writes:

“Still, for all the uncertainties about our trajectory, I think I’m a bit more optimistic than many of my fellow Americans.

“Maybe that’s because my wife and I were in small-town America — Ashland, Ore., for a theater festival — on July 4. Ashland’s annual Independence Day parade was an uplifting celebration that included free American flags and Popsicles, a military flyover and parade participants calling for universal health care and welcoming immigrants. Far from the toxicity of Washington, D.C., it captured all the contradictions and beauty of our country.”

It’s almost as if the further away we get from Washington, the clearer those contradictions become. Funny how that works.

Still, what’s happening around us has not been easy to turn away from, even for a day.

The country remains mired in a seemingly endless war of choice in a volatile and unpredictable region, where billions of dollars of national resources are being expended every day at the whim of a man who appears to have no clue as to his next move.

We’re seeing a ramping up of immigration enforcement that results in the deaths of people with families just like the ones who joined us to witness our vows.

And all this is happening amid the First Family’s ongoing and staggering self-enrichment, as well as the president’s various ridiculous, ego-driven vanity projects around the nation’s capital.

At the end of it all, ordinary Americans are exhausted by figuring out what they should or shouldn’t be outraged by.

Worse, as John Pavlovitz argues, is the use of “fake patriotism” to justify turning a blind eye to anything that’s wrong.

“People who truly love this country, those who earnestly seek a faith expressed in love, human beings who are burdened to make America worthy of the speeches and anthems—we find ourselves branded heretics and traitors and apostates, forcefully displaced from religion and country by these angry squatters who have taken up residence in them.

“True patriots should want all Americans to vote, they should oppose would-be dictators, they should yield to the Constitution, and they should demand a nation that is offered to everyone equally.”

Patriotism, in this case love of what America represents, cannot belong exclusively to one party; that was an important takeaway from Bruce Springsteen’s recent Land of Hope and Dreams tour – perhaps the most politically significant of his fifty-year career.

Culturally, the past week was a tale of two images:

This, by Shepard Fairey for Time Magazine, was written about beautifully by my friend Yvonne Watterson. Her vision of America is the one we both fell in love with from far away (and check out Yvonne’s lovely piece that kindly mentions our nuptials).

Contrast that with this image…

Here’s the story behind the photograph by Cheney Orr from Reuters.

(Also, check out cartoonist Steve Brodner’s important take on that image’s inevitable historic echoes.)

*

It’s becoming increasingly clear as November’s midterms approach, that the current president is laying the groundwork if not to intervene directly in the electoral process, at least to undermine public trust in the outcomes, creating an environment where citizens’ collective faith in the mechanisms of government is being eaten away.

His firing this week of the remaining members of the bi-partisan Election Assistance Commission is just his latest move to turn that particular screw.

*

I flew from Dublin to Pittsburgh on the 3^rd July, our wedding eve, by which time my future siblings-in-law had created a beautifully special place where we would pledge our futures to each other.

On my backpack I have a button that reads “Uphold Democracy – Support Journalists”. I get plenty of comments on it, particularly coming through US airports.

Like my support for press freedom and local news at a period of great change, I’m immeasurably proud of my wife’s commitment to her work in the healthcare field; as well as her long-time voluntary involvement with causes to promote democracy. In both arenas she has worked tirelessly for the best possible outcomes for people who need help the most.

There have definitely been little victories recently, but all of it is just relentless.

And because of things like this, and this, neither of our main political parties fill us with confidence that the big, urgent, structural things that are wrong with the country may be “fixed” after November. But to understand and love America in this difficult moment, it’s important, I think, to understand that Donald Trump did not change us, he revealed us.

And it was us, not exclusively him, that hardened our positions, either as his opponents or his enablers.

As much as the president’s poll ratings have cratered recently, there is still a consistent one-third of the country that either wants more of what he’s doing, or may end up holding their nose as they vote for him anyway.

That’s why, sadly, we’re not going “back” anytime soon to what passes for normality or any sense of shared consensus that put country before party or personality. That’s just a fact of life, and, as Phillips O’Brien outlined earlier, it’s unrealistic, for now, to think we can.

But still, as Nick Kristof does, we hope.

And every year from now, for as long as we’re given, the Fourth of July will always be a special cause for celebration in our home.

See Also:

Call It Democracy

Stupid On Stilts

A King Ain’t Satisfied ‘Til He Rules Everything

Rulers And Rulebreakers (From May)

The Billion-Dollar Ballroom (From May)

The Wise And Honest (From March)

***

When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not expect how wildly out of whack things in the political world were about to become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for ‘normality’.

As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re just plain wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.

The two links in the above paragraphs change with each weekly column – the pieces are definitely worth reading. They’re all linked here:

During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. As you might expect, one has been relatively more sane than the other.

As always, thanks for reading.

If you love America as much as I still do – in spite of everything – please take part in some activity to celebrate democracy. And please, when we get to November, show up to vote.

*

There’s still quite a way to go until what will likely be the most anticipated sold-out game on the Chicago White Sox schedule this season, the August 11 match-up with the Cincinnati Reds, or Pope Hat Night.

According to Alyssa Meyers at Marketing Brew, Mike Downey, senior director of marketing and promotions for the Sox, appears under no illusions about the significance of honoring the team’s most famous – and least fallible – fan.

“It’s really hard to comprehend how historically amazing that is,” Downey said. “This tradition that’s been passed along through history for 1,500 to 2,000 years, depending on how you interpret it, intersects with the White Sox. That’s just an incredible, crazy thing.

“The White Sox celebrated Pope Leo on multiple occasions last season, including holding a mass to honor his election and installing a plaque at his World Series seat, and Downey said he wanted to do more marketing surrounding the pope this year. His team immediately thought of doing a Pope Leo bobblehead but tragically couldn’t secure the necessary NIL rights, he said.”

“Hopefully we will at some point, but I think the pope had bigger and better things to focus his time on, so I don’t blame him for that,” Downey said.”

That’s good to know, I guess.

Back in April, when the Sox were in need of, shall we say, some spiritual healing, chief revenue officer Brooks Boyer told The Athletic that Downey and his team “literally throw everything against the wall” when thinking about promotional opportunities. “Any oddity, they research it, and he was convicted on this one.”

According to Sports Business Journal, the Sox “attendance has rebounded amid their on-field turnaround.” The team is on pace to draw two million fans this season for only the second time since 2011, while Dan McGrath at Crain’s Chicago Business writes that after putting up with despair, “White Sox fans must now tolerate hope.”

“Just two years ago, the team set a franchise record “for ineptitude” by going 41-121. They exceeded that win total in game No. 80 this season. Likewise, they have “already surpassed last season’s meager attendance figure” of 927,315.”

If the playoffs started today, the Tampa Bay Rays and the surprising White Sox would be in line for first-round byes but, as Anthony Castrovince writes for MLB.com, the American league is, um, there for the taking.

“The so-called “Junior Circuit” has never looked more junior. It’s on pace for its worst collective winning percentage (.483). (Of course, a sub-.500 winning percentage only became possible with the advent of Interleague Play in 1997.)

“But in great difficulty lies great opportunity (or so we tell ourselves). Right now, even the worst teams in the AL can at least try to talk themselves into being two good weeks away from the playoff race.”

Redemption works both ways?

As Ken Rosenthal wrote this week at The Athletic, putting the Holy Father in a room with the man once voted “the most hated man in baseball” probably only works if it’s AJ Pierzynski. The former White Sox catcher presented the Pope with the game ball from Game One of the 2005 World Series, at which the pontiff, then just Robert Prevost, was famously caught on broadcast footage.

“I was at Game 2, too. But nobody knows that. They didn’t find me,” Leo is reported to have told Pierzynski.

On Monday, the visiting White Sox notched a rare victory over the Baltimore Orioles in the opening game of a three-game series at Camden Yards, just the second Sox win in the previous 17 games against the O’s.

With the hopeful return from injury of Munetaka Murakami, the Sox look set to build on the momentum of having three 20-home run hitters before the All-Star break for the first time since 2006. According to WhiteSoxRoundtable, Miguel Vargas is one dinger away from joining Murakami and Colson Montgomery on that mark.

“The last time the White Sox had three players with at least 20 home runs at the All-Star break was in 2006, when Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko, and Jim Thome accomplished the feat. Thome had 30 home runs at the break, Dye had 25, and Konerko had 21 (per Scott Merkin). Those went on to finish the season with 42, 44, and 35 home runs, respectively.”

See Also:

The Pope And Nellie Fox (From December 2025)

The South Side’s Very Own… (From May 2025)

Take Me To Church (From May 2025)

**

All Stars, All The Time

The second phase of voting is now under way for the July 14 All-Star Game starting line-ups, and will remain open until noon on Thursday. Before the ASG, NBC hosts Star-Spangled Sunday on July 4 weekend.

Meanwhile the latest power rankings from The Athletic heading into the break give a good overview of how the second half might unfold, as well as the implications for the upcoming trade deadline (August 3).

Elsewhere, there have been some stellar performances…

And some maybe not so great.

Meanwhile, in last night’s game in Sacramento, Max Muncy was starting at third base and batting seventh for the visiting Dodgers; while Max Muncy was starting at third base and batting seventh for the Athletics.

Max Muncy, of course, came out on top.

See Also:

Hey Now, You’re Not (From July 2025)

Halfway Home (From July 2025)

Fantasy World (From March)

*

Before A Fall

The San Francisco Giants organization seems to be going out of its way to keep their Pride Night debacle alive.

There were restrictions on radio questions for CEO Larry Baer, while the interview with Buster Posey – the team’s president of baseball operations – is actually painful to watch…

Parker Molloy has a good recap of how things escalated in her piece ‘Keep it baseball related’.

She writes:

“The players could have celebrated God’s covenant on any day they liked. Instead, they did it on Pride Night, on the rainbow cap, on the 10th anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre, the night a gunman murdered 49 people at a gay club in Orlando.

“That was the situation in front of the Giants the next morning.”

Molloy also argues that White House reporters and political journalists generally could learn something from the persistence of the beat writers who have been covering the story.

See Also:

True Colours?

**

Tickets, Please

The Red Sox game against the team that were still called the “Devil” Rays on June 28 2001 (top right ticket) was the second time I’d been to Fenway Park. (My first visit was in 1997). This time I was attending a conference at MIT and the organisers had arranged for a group of us to go to the ballgame.

It ended up a tight one, with Tampa edging it 4-3 and, appropriately enough since we were in Boston, Joe Kennedy started for them and pitched six innings before Jesús Colomé came on to get the win. Derek Lowe took the loss for the Red Sox.

One thing I remember was that because it was the Red Sox centenary year, I bought a hat which, many years later in Belfast, I got signed by Senator George Mitchell, who among other things is a big Red Sox fan.

***

No Game Notes again this week as I’m still in Belfast until after the July 4^th weekend. (I’ll also get caught up with Reading The Field next time too).

The following week the Cubs are at Camden Yards for a three-game series and then we’re into the All-Star Break.

Here’s a link to Game Notes for this season so far.

*

As always, thanks for reading.

During the regular season I try to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. I do my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.

There’s a full States of Play archive here, and a ‘Just Baseball’ index for this season here.

*

Finally, if you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you, and you can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.

You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.

Here’s how it works:

You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it’s published.

The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it? And then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?

I’ll round out the other questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, as well as anything else you might like to talk about. It’ll finish up with your thoughts on where things might be headed. Obviously, you’ll get final approval before it gets posted.

Sound good? Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully see you at a ballgame.

*

A year or so ago, Dan Brooks wrote in an essay at Politico that we were well into the “just-saying-stuff” presidency.

Brooks said of Donald Trump: “At this point in his improbably long career as a guy who either is or could be president, he has opened up space to lie, reverse course or simply screw up in ways no previous American leader has managed, freeing himself from nearly all consequences for his own speech.”

“From the moment he descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy and wound up calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” he established a pattern of calumny, hyperbole, name-calling, speculation and nonsense that made it clear nothing he said could be taken at face value, except the stuff he meant. Identifying that stuff amid his spray of unserious remarks requires a knowledge of his mental state that no one else has. It’s impossible to know when Trump is joking, when he’s off on a rant and when he might actually mean what he says.”

That’s why fact-checking him in any kind of normative way was always going to be largely pointless beyond keeping score – a score that the people around him would then proudly ignore or even glorify. But in the year since, every aspect of Brooks’s analysis has become even more exaggerated, now with darkly uncertain and potentially destructive results for the country.

The late-night social media tirades became an extension of just-saying-stuff, since any immediate outrage and even panic they cause will have evaporated, or been overtaken, by the following morning.

So, no matter what Trump might say about his attempts to end the war he started against Iran in February, what we have now is not a deal. It’s not even a concept of a plan or even a workable framework. Right now, it seems to be a “roadmap” to hopefully find a path to a possible deal in two months.

But with VP JD Vance signalling that the 60-day clock is running, the Memorandum of Understanding Trump ostentatiously signed at – perhaps appropriately – Versailles during the G7 did little to generate any sort of clarity as to next steps in ending a conflict that is costing Americans about a billion dollars a day.

The administration now wants an additional $80billion to continue – or conclude, I guess - the war, while it’s still unclear who might actually foot the bill for the $300billion reconstruction fund Iran appears to have been promised.

The increasingly precarious VP JD meanwhile, is, literally in real time, being thrown head-first under the bus while supposedly leading the negotiations in Switzerland; with Trump’s diehard supporters happy to let him take the fall.

Vance, of course, was the highest-ranking member of Trump’s inner circle to tell the president of his misgivings before the war, only now to be the one to have to put lipstick on the pig of its conclusion.

Everything, as happens increasingly often these days, appears to be enveloped in a kind of disinterested chaos. And it is all characterized by a distinct lack of trust – between Iran and Trump, obviously, but also between Israel and Trump and maybe even now between Trump and his base.

NBC News reported:

“Trump has offered shifting reasons for going to war with Iran and given different answers on what he hoped to get out of it. Both Iran and the U.S. have continued to launch strikes, even as leaders say a temporary ceasefire brokered in early April remains in place. Even the MOU differs from what Trump said he wanted out of a deal with Iran.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, amid the latest polling both on the war specifically and Trump’s own personal job approval, some Republicans have had enough. On Tuesday, the Senate voted to cut off the military campaign, but the vote was largely symbolic and will of course be ignored.

As NBC reported:

“Asked if he’s confident Iran will give up its nuclear ambitions, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said on Tuesday, ‘Unless you were homeschooled by a day drinker, no one’s confident that Iran’s going to do anything.’”

So for the next two months, the only thing we seem to have is the assurance that the president and his enablers will assert that whatever agreement eventually emerges to let them off the hook can only be better than the one that had that other guy’s name on it.

At a time when – you would think – the US needs all the allies it can get, Trump’s trip to the G7 in France (which, of course, the French had delayed so as not to clash with his birthday UFC extravaganza) gave a painful signal of how the US under its current leader is regarded by the rest of the world. One former State Department spokesperson told Politico:

“The bar for success at a multilateral summit like this is quite low during this administration,” [and that it] “really amounts to avoiding a massive blowup either in person or on social media.”

Yet the “just-says-stuff” president couldn’t resist picking a fight with Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, previously the European leader who was probably closest to him ideologically. And soon he won’t have Sir Keir Starmer to bring him any more royal invitations to a state visit. Because that worked so well last time.

As the world changes around Donald Trump, it’s partly how the world changes around any 80-year-old. As they decline, the people closest to them will hold back criticism and make sure their elder is always the centre of attention in order to keep them connected to the moment. But, of course, this particular elder has the nuclear codes.

With Trump and Vladimir Putin both now “trapped in losing battles against reality” in Iran and Ukraine, according to Rafael Behr at The Guardian, it’s probably too late for the US president to admit that maybe Zelenskyy had the cards after all.

In the end it will just be one more thing he got wrong. (And this compilation, introduced by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, is only from halfway through the first Trump administration. We’re still falling.)

Just two months ago, Ben Rhodes commented that the Iran conflict was a “profoundly shameful episode in American history, no matter what happens next.”

That was indisputably true then and still is now. Except today that analysis probably extends to Trump’s entire second presidency.

See Also:

The Brain Fog Of War

Jaw, Jaw (From April)

Crisis, Chaos And Corruption (From April)

The Stone Age, You Say? (From April)

The Lid Is Off (From March)

The Only Restraint Is ‘My Own Morality’ (From January)

**

Call it Democracy

As the country gets ready for what really should be a joyous, celebratory 250^th birthday party but will likely end up a tired re-run of the nation’s most embarrassing blooper reel, a Reuters/Ipsos poll indicates that a substantial number of its citizens – about 40 per cent – do not believe it will last for another 250.

“Two-thirds of respondents – including 85% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans – said they agreed with a statement that American democracy was in danger of failing. The overall share seeing democracy at risk was up from 57% in a poll conducted in August of last year, with the increase driven by more Republicans worried about democracy’s staying power.”

Quite frankly, some of us would be happy just to make it to a reasonably free and fair election in November 2028. Because we all probably know by now that this is going to be the Trumpian go-to…

Moira Donegan at The Guardian wrote about how the president’s latest claims of vote-rigging in California are a “grim preview” of the midterms. She concludes:

“What is “fraudulent” is the very idea of progressive governance, which is also why, of course, it is pointless to point out that Trump only claims “fraud” in elections where he doesn’t like the result. The “fraud” he sees is in the very concept of democracy, in the idea that people who don’t agree with or fawn over him might have a say, too.”

While some Democratic senators recently raised the alarm over DOJ pullback on voter protections, a judge this week called a halt to the administration’s creation of a voter database including individuals’ Social Security information.

CBS reported: “All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” [the judge] wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

For now, though, yesterday was primary day in a number of states, and perhaps the biggest talking point was the success of candidates in New York congressional races who had been endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who outdid even the Knicks by going three-for-three. The question now is what those outcomes might mean for Democrats nationally.

Of course, the last time the Knicks won a championship, the sitting president resigned in disgrace the following year; but this time such a scenario is hardly likely to end with Trump’s voluntary exit – not while there is simply so, so much money to be made.

See Also:

Get Out The Map

Loser

Happy Birthday To Me (From February)

There’s More Than One Way To Win (From February)

Vote While You Still Can (From November 2025)

January 6^th Riot ‘Doesn’t Happen Without Trump’ (From January)

**

Slopaganda

On the subject of the nation’s birthday, Robert McCoy at The New Republic wrote about how, under the current administration, expressions of patriotic nostalgia have, somehow, fallen victim to Abraham Lincoln’s warning “don’t believe every quote you see on the internet”.

“Under Trump 2.0, executive branch agencies have abandoned their previously staid social media presences for trollish meme posting, engagement bait, AI-generated or -manipulated content, and the language and aesthetics of the extremely online far right. With these tactics in effect, the misquotations feel almost quaint. (After all, the erroneous appending of authoritative names like that of Winston Churchill to expressions they never actually uttered is a much-ridiculed staple of online life that long predates today’s feverish digital landscape.) But it is undoubtedly a sign of our slopaganda-soaked times that government agencies exhibit all the fact-checking rigor of a retiree sharing fake Albert Einstein quotes on Facebook.”

As bad if not worse has been the appropriation of the work of beloved American cultural icons, like artist Norman Rockwell.

With the USA team currently exceeding expectations at the World Cup, the players – many of whom are first-generation citizens or from immigrant families weren’t immune from being co-opted into some kind of throwback nationalist meme on the part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Contrast that with the Iranian team’s coolness under pressure.

And, of course, in terms of the pinnacle of performative BS, UFC’s Dana White doesn’t seem too keen to repeat the presidential birthday nonsense at the White House.

Finally removing the current president’s name from the Kennedy Center was what Judith Levine wrote at The Guardian was a “much-needed act of iconoclasm.” She concludes:

“Trump has so far withheld from his opponents a collective, indeed national, experience of joy, relief and triumph. He has cannily denied history the recorded evidence of an event that may be seen in the future as a step in the decline of his empire. He will keep us on edge for as long as he can.

But the tarp, like the empire, must finally fall. The sheeting may be pulled down by a crew of workers, police, or a gang of vandals. And when it does, the blank space above the name of a beloved and admired president will symbolize the vacuity and, at least this once, the defeated vanity and power of a would-be monarch.”

But it’s of course the farcical $14million no-bid ‘renovation’ of the now algae-infested reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington – dubbed the Strait of Warm Ooze – that probably best represents how the president and his administration react when things go wrong.

As Parker Molloy writes:

“When it failed in public, Trump reached for a villain, and the story grew by the day. On June 20 he said vandals had cut a “250 foot long gash” into the lining with a knife and poured corrosive chemicals into the water. By June 22 the gash was 300 feet. By June 23 it was 350 feet, the damage now done “probably in the dark of night.” He never produced a photo, a name, or a motive. He told reporters the proof would come out in court. What he produced instead, every time, was a threat. “Years in jail,” he wrote on June 20. By June 22 it was a 10-year prison sentence “for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction,” which he promised to fully enforce.”

As Seth Meyers said, the metaphor really is way too obvious….

See Also:

‘Stupid On Stilts’

Government By Kayfabe (From November 2024)

The Billion-Dollar Ballroom

The Wise And Honest (From March)

Powerful Performance, Performative Pique (From February)

***

As always, thanks for reading. When I started this project in 2022, I simply did not expect how wildly out of whack things in the political world were about to become; all while sports continue to show the face of a society functioning with what passes for ‘normality’.

As for how all of this ends – and what might come after – I have no idea. And if anyone tells you they do, they’re just plain wrong. Unpredictability at home and abroad has become the touchstone of how we have decided to govern ourselves and there will be plenty of collateral damage before the dust clears.

The two links in the above paragraphs change with each weekly column – the pieces are definitely worth reading. They’re all linked here:

During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. As you might expect, one has been relatively more sane than the other.

I’ll also be sending out some invites for more Q&A write-ups and will aim to produce some new content for the site.

Let me know what you’ve enjoyed or what you haven’t? And if you think you might like to take part and talk about your memories of baseball and politics, drop me a line? Here’s how it works.

You can, of course, find a full States of Play substack archive here, and the original site here.

*

MLB waded into a McCovey Cove-sized mess this week when it decided to issue what seemed to be a meaningless, non-disciplinary “warning” to the three Giants pitchers at the centre of a row over defacing their team’s Pride Night rainbow caps.

In a statement, MLB said:

“To be clear, this routine verbal warning not to wear the hat in future games is not disciplinary and had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the message. We respect players’ right to free expression,” reads the statement. “However, writing of any kind, with any message, is prohibited per Major League Baseball’s Uniform Regulations which provides in part that, ‘[a] Player may not write, attach, affix, embroider or otherwise display nicknames or messages on apparel or playing equipment…”

With something of a swing and a miss by Giants management in handling the immediate fallout, things probably inevitably escalated to involve VP JD Vance and other Republican figures, even Rob Schneider.

While one poster described Vance’s intervention as “probably the clearest and most annoying example of the Trump admin trying to portray their election as a cultural project rather than any attempt to improve public policy,” CNN said:

“Vance’s reaction – “Trump won” – is essentially accurate. In the past year, both registered Republicans and independents have become more likely to say that society’s “level of acceptance” has “gone too far.” So it’s not surprising to learn that any number of baseball players are willing to make a performance out of ensuring everyone knows some of their fanbase isn’t welcome at the ballpark. But it was a performance, not a sacrifice. They didn’t suffer for taking their stand at all.”

For the administration, though, momentum was building. The Guardian reported that “On Thursday, assistant US attorney general Harmeet Dhillon wrote a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred saying the justice department had referred the league to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate whether the discipline amounts to religious discrimination.”

The situation with the Giants came just a few days after two Los Angeles Dodgers players chose not to wear the rainbow-logo hat for their team’s Pride night. Last year, Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw had similarly inscribed a bible reference on his hat.

But as Bill Shaikin wrote at the Los Angeles Times, MLB’s cap condemnation “isn’t the anti-Christian crackdown conservatives claim.”

“In 2023, the year after five Tampa Bay Rays players declined to wear rainbow logos for Pride Night, Manfred said the league would no longer compel players to do so.

“We have told teams, in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases that we don’t think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players: not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views,”Manfred said then.”

In York, Pennsylvania this week, a minor league team chose to forfeit its Pride Night game after fewer than nine players on the 28-man roster were willing to wear rainbow unis.

But San Francisco’s fanbase and community – it should go without saying – is different. As Bill Shaikan reported, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie told the Bay Area Reporter: “I think a few people made it about themselves and not about the community. Here in San Francisco, the LGBTQ+ community is what makes this city so special.”

Brady Klopfer at McCovey Chronicles said the Giants “told fans exactly who they are,” while Ann Killion wrote at the San Francisco Chronicle that the pitchers “didn’t just deface their uniforms, they alienated their fans.”

Giants’ broadcaster Mike Krukow said that any athlete that plays in the city has to “be aware of just how impassioned the people are here” about supporting the gay community. According to SFGate:

“I think when you’re a player and you come into this environment, it’s your responsibility to know just how sensitive this city is in regards to that cultural freedom and religious freedom, and just the way that you live your life,” he said. “And I think they were in for a rude awakening with the response, and it wasn’t just from the gay community; it was from the Northern California community that supports the gay community.”

Grant Brisbee wrote at The Athletic that, at the end of the day, the pitchers’ bible verses showed “how they’ve missed the point”. He concludes:

“Pride Night is about bringing more people into the group and telling them they belong in the same stadium, rooting for the same team. By resorting to “us” and “them” instead of truly understanding the humanity of the people asking for help, those who chose to make a statement on or with their hats completely missed the point. If anyone is looking to make the world better, they might try listening and understanding. Pride Night is about support and lifting human beings. Making it about something else — yourself, say, or the idea that some people aren’t as worthy of recognition or support — shows how little some people actually care about a message of love.”

“After the game, Roupp told reporters, “I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want … and express what we want.” I’m also thankful for this, and I’m using that same freedom to suggest that he’s only scratching the surface of what he’s purporting to believe in. Dig deeper, my dude. Dig a lot deeper. There’s a way to help people navigate this life with the respect and grace they deserve. It is a choice to ignore that on a night dedicated to people who need others on their side. Do better. That’s the only thing we’re all supposed to do around here, anyway. Do better.”

As for the game, the Cubs won 5-1. Landen Roupp took the loss and fell to 5-7 on the season. The Giants are 17 games back of the division-leading Dodgers.

See Also:

Dodging The Elephant (From April 2025)

**

Batting Around

Meanwhile, in Chicago…

Definitely beloved outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong hit for the 13^th cycle in Cubs history – and the first in reverse – as the home team came back for a walk-off walk capping a 5-4 win over Colorado.

Unfortunately even since that highlight, inconsistency and injuries have once more proved the Cubs’ constant companion. As Michael Johnson wrote at WGN:

“We’re still weeks from the Fourth of July, and Cubs fans already have whiplash over following a team that began the season with expectations of making the playoffs for a second straight year, at the very least…

“Everyone, from the players to manager Craig Counsell to team president Jed Hoyer, has seemed to be at a loss for words for why the Cubs have struggled so much with RISP. And what can they really say, other than the usual things about water finding its level, players performing to the stats on the back of their baseball cards, and other cliches in the realm of “that’s just baseball?”

And the extent of the rollercoaster was obvious once more just last night…

The past few days, however, have built towards an uplifting Juneteenth in Chicago, as the city prepared to celebrate the opening of the Obama Presidential Center.

See Also:

Celebration and Honor (From June 2025)

You might also like to read ‘Crossroads’, my Q&A from a couple of seasons back with Chicago writer John W Fountain.

*

No Scotland, No Party

With the FIFA World Cup now well under way (and proving with each game that football can rise above even the most challenging organisational circumstances) the last-place Boston Red Sox guaranteed themselves thousands of new fans this week when they embraced the visiting Tartan Army, in town for Scotland’s games against Haiti and Morocco.

According to Scottish paper The National, Red Sox historian Jerry Thornton was among the many fans happy for the distraction from their own team’s form.

“Struggling Boston crashed to another defeat, but Red Sox pundit and superfan Thornton reckoned their fans fell in love with the Tartan Army. He said: “You don’t need me to remind you just how far the Boston Red Sox have sunk.

“Fenway Park has gone from ‘America’s Most Beloved Ballpark’ to an overly expensive bore. Just another tourist trap locals avoid. But we can be grateful to the tourists who did go to Fenway.

“The Tartan Army had us at hello. From the moment they set a kilted foot at Logan Airport with bagpipes, they won the cold hearts of everyone in Massachusetts, and they took it to entirely new heights on Sunday.

“There are times when guests wear out their welcome. But nobody in Massachusetts wants The Tartan Army to leave.”

Amid talk that Glasgow and Boston may even become “twins”, sadly for Scotland defeat to Morocco on Sunday means they’ll have to go to Miami this coming week and get something from their final game, against Brazil.

*

Ouch…

Zack Meisel at The Athletic had a painful – and literal – story on why catchers are getting hit below the belt more often.

“Around the league, more and more often, catchers need a minute. It’s become routine to see the umpire call time as the catcher lies in agony, doubled over after yet another foul ball or spiked pitch caroms into a sensitive area.

“Guys (are) keeling over,” said Detroit’s Dillon Dingler.

“There is no data on the specific phenomenon, but the dozen current and former catchers The Athletic spoke to agree that it is happening, and they agree on why it’s happening. Without hesitation, several pointed to the advent of the one-knee stance, a postural tweak that has swept the league in recent years.”

In other ball-strike news, this may have been a first, or just an off-night…

*

Finally, you know how they always tell you ‘never leave before the end’…?

This flashback to 1989 is a reminder why.

**

Tickets, Please

Previously on Tickets Please

***

As always, thanks for reading. No Game Notes this week (and I’ll catch up Reading The Field next time too) as I’m back in Belfast now for a couple more weeks, but will be back in the US for a very special July 4 celebration and am looking forward to getting to some more games after that.

During the regular season I’ll try to write a baseball-related post midweek and then a politics wrap at weekends. I do my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.

There’s a full States of Play archive here, and a ‘Just Baseball’ index for this season here.

*

Finally, if you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you, and you can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.

You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.

Here’s how it works:

You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it’s published.

The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it? And then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?

I’ll round out the other questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, as well as anything else you might like to talk about. It’ll finish up with your thoughts on where things might be headed. Obviously, you’ll get final approval before it gets posted.

Sound good? Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully see you at a ballgame.

*

When construction began on whatever it is that’s rising on the South Lawn of the People’s House, Charlie Warzel posted “Wake up babe, the White House is a Six Flags”.

But this is where America is right now. Well into its Bread and Circuses phase, yet the bread isn’t being handed out for free by an Emperor to keep favor with an easily-distracted people. Rather, along with other real costs of ordinary living, it’s becoming more expensive every week.

All the while, the grift continues to multiply. As Don Lemon, among others, once said, the only difference between Donald Trump and Jim Jones is that Trump would sell you the Kool-Aid.

UFC is offering “VIP Packages” for Sunday’s fight for between $1million and $1.5million. A law suit seeking a halt to the event claims it is “deeply corrupt”.

“Plaintiffs’ attorneys argue the event is “deeply corrupt” and have accused Trump of benefitting from the event financially, citing reporting that says the president purchased up to $50,000 worth of stock in TKO, UFC’s parent company, earlier this year.

“The event is neither “for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of American Independence” nor, crucially, being “planned, organized, and executed” by the federal government,” the lawsuit says.”

According to The Hill:

“The lawsuit says brands “are clambering over each other to see their brands plastered adjacent to the Executive Residence and Reflecting Pool.”

“And the UFC’s broadcast partner, Paramount Skydance—which is run by two other Trump allies, Larry and David Ellison—has decided that no American will be able to take in this “celebration of America” without first paying $8.99 plus tax for a Paramount Plus streaming subscription,” it continues.”

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported on how the president and his representatives were leveraging events celebrating the nation’s birthday by “offering access to him and other perks to donors who give at least $1million.”

The brazenness to simply ignore mounting public outrage over his various vanity projects also comes amid a report by Public Citizen on how “donors” to Trump’s ballroom scheme have benefited with “$50billion worth of government contracts” since the East Wing was demolished.

I suppose if you can’t just sell the White House itself, this might be the next best thing.

When North Carolina Sen Thom Tillis memorably uttered the phrase in this week’s headline, he was talking about the White House plan for its ludicrous near-$2billion “anti-weaponization slush fund” (which now may - or indeed may not - be dead).

But really, though, Tillis – a two-term senator who’s not running again and isn’t shy of criticising the administration – could have been talking about any aspect of what currently passes for governance.

As well as being an awesome band name, “stupid on stilts” has become a catch-all for everything we see around us, as with each day the administration flails from one mess to the next at home and abroad. The only constant thread now appears to be how much something will cost taxpayers and how much Trump and his acolytes will profit from it.

And, like everything else, despite a significant majority of Americans disapproving of next weekend’s UFC spectacle, it actually sums up our political moment in a way that’s not really surprising and, if we’re honest, has been coming for a while.

Eric Francisco at Esquire wrote about the “strangest sporting event in our national history”.

“Before Trump, MMA was considered a vulgar sport that disgusted the political establishment. In 1996, then U.S. Senator John McCain famously called mixed martial arts “human cockfighting” and motioned to ban it in all 50 states…

“MMA’s fierce individualism and showcase of hyper-masculinity—not to mention the legacy of the martial arts boom throughout the 1980s and 1990s—has made it the de facto sport of MAGA. Bringing the UFC to an important civic space isn’t just Trump flexing whatever power he thinks he has, but overwhelming it. That’s true UFC style.”

Of course, not everyone is a fan – not even everyone in the UFC:

In a post-primary season Congress, could that initial pushback among anxious Republicans over Trump’s Slush Fund actually be the start of something more significant?

Probably not. They’re too far down the road by now with him at the wheel, and both of them know it. As Michael Ian Black wrote recently for The Daily Beast, “A car crash president is driving his party off a cliff. Buckle up!”

(It’s worth noting it was probably obvious that at some point Trump would back off the fund, given its dubious legality and since what he really wanted from the whole “settlement” pantomime was the “forever” IRS immunity arrangement. He won’t be giving that up until he’s forced to, and there’s zero chance that will happen until after November. This way, ahead of the election he gets to tell the MAGA faithful “I wanted to do this for you, but the Deep State stopped me” and it costs him nothing.)

For now, though, the Trump family is getting more scrutiny, pushback and protest against its cartoonish dealings from the people of Albania than it is from Republicans.

Mitchell Prothero at The Nation has details of the backstory and the broader significance.

He writes:

“The Albanian government, led by the semi-autocratic and pro-development Prime Minister Edi Rama, now faces a unique coalition of environmental activists, local residents claiming corrupt developers and government officials screwed them out of their property, and ordinary people concerned that Albania’s explosion of luxury development is linked to money laundering. Among other things, the mounting protests in Albania are demonstrating that the Trumpian model of oligarchic impunity is not only aging badly in America but also proving to be an increasingly toxic export.”

The No Kings movement is planning its next event for Trump’s 80^th birthday, the same day as the presidential UFC fight, on June 14. (We’ll see later about other forms of cultural protest). But counter-programming insanity is always tricky, especially when everyone in the audience is exhausted.)

In what has become a pattern, even after the recent legal ruling that Trump’s name must be removed from the Kennedy Center by this coming Friday, plenty of lasting damage has already been done.

And, as Greg Olear observed, “Because his life’s mission is to ruin everything good in the world,” Trump is also set to be at Madison Square Garden in New York City for Game Three of the NBA finals tonight, meaning ticket-holders will have to arrive hours before the game starts due to added security. Watch parties around the Garden have also been cancelled (although Mayor Mamdani later announced one at Bryant Park with a 5,000 capacity.)

Having already paid astronomical prices for even nosebleed seats, Knicks fans who are halfway to celebrating their first championship since the Nixon administration, will probably just love that.

As Jimmy Kimmel said, it will be the first time Trump will have been near a court in New York since he was convicted of 34 felonies.

“You’d think he’d be rooting for the Spurs, since that’s what got him out of Vietnam.”

See Also:

Government By Kayfabe (From November 2024)

Crisis, Chaos And Corruption (From April)

Rulers And Rulebreakers

The Billion-Dollar Ballroom

The Wise And Honest (From March)

Happy Birthday To Me (From February)

**

At War With Ourselves

In France to mark the 82^nd anniversary of D-Day, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a speech that was roundly condemned as “grotesque stupidity”, “disgusting and obnoxious” and even “horrifying.”

The Guardian reported that “Hegseth seized on the moment marking the wartime liberation of Europe to reiterate the US administration’s longstanding attack on European immigration policies.”

In an address to honor veterans who had defeated Naziism, Hegseth said:

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”

One Republican criticised the remarks, calling them “inappropriate” and “out of place”.

The heroes of yesterday and the frauds of today.

Sadly, D-Day wasn’t the only occasion for Hegseth to force himself upon us this week – after he cut female Navy officers from a promotions list, the AP reported that several said they “see the unusual intervention as a sign that their careers now have a ceiling and worry for the future generation of female military leaders.”

The Pentagon then imposed a shake-up of religious classifications of service personnel, reducing the list of recognised faiths from 200 to just over 30. DoD said the policy was not “designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of ‘officially approved’ religions.”

But Mormons – and especially Mormon Republicans – weren’t happy.

Meanwhile as the US action against Iran – oh yeah, that – passed the 100-day mark, Israel launched retaliatory strikes on Iran this morning despite being warned not to by President Trump.

Amid ongoing conflicting accounts around negotiations, any kind of resolution to the conflict in the region seems as far off as every other time Trump – who still claims he “calls the shots” – insisted it was close.

According to AlArabiya today, Iran’s “top negotiator” posted on his Telegram channel that “We are not going to either just fight or just negotiate; rather, we are going to fight at our own time and negotiate at our own time. Our goal is the end of the war and stable security and we have no trust toward the opposing party.”

Traders, meanwhile, believe that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz “won’t return to normal until the end of the year.”

Against an extending backdrop of steadily dismantled American leadership in the world – or even collaborative engagement in light of global health situations – and increased polarisation at home; it’s easy to understand why David French at The New York Times wrote an excellent piece recently arguing that the “fire of stupidity cannot be contained”.

“It is no coincidence that authoritarianism is once again appealing to people at a time when two things are happening at once. Liberal democracies are struggling to meet the needs of a substantial portion of their citizens, and entire generations have come of age with no living memory of the totalitarian horrors of the 20th century.

“In other words, millions upon millions of people are enduring democracy as “the worst form of government” without the necessary balanced understanding (that citizens in the mid-20th century had gained through firsthand observation) of “except all those other forms that have been tried.”

“So even fascism and communism — for some people, at least — are no longer avatars of atrocity, but dynamic alternatives to a sclerotic present. In their frustration, all too many people are attracted to the theoretical benefits of authoritarianism, and they don’t have the experience or the education to understand its actual and inevitable defects.”

Meanwhile, the tide may have turned In Ukraine’s war to defend itself against its neighbour. Al Jazeera reports:

“Sensing the growing strength of their position, Ukrainian forces struck the city of St Petersburg as Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived there for a high-profile economic forum, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote him an open letter telling him he could not win the war.

“Your resources are significantly dwindling,” Zelenskyy wrote. “You won’t have enough money and political power to continue buying the loyalty of Russians, as you’ve been doing for 26 years.”

“Ballistics is the last Russian argument in the war,” Zelenskyy wrote, and called for the US to allow it to produce Patriot interceptors under licence. The US has refused to do so, but Zelenskyy has pledged to produce a Ukrainian version of the Patriot system by the end of 2027.”

See Also:

The Brain Fog Of War

Kick The Nest, Get Stung

The Stone Age, You Say?

‘Once In A Generation Moment’ (From February 2025)

Certain Things Are Set In Stone (From May 2025)

**

Loser

President Trump may “not care about the midterms” but plenty of other Americans certainly do.

For example, the administration’s plan to put Trump’s literal mugshot on a $250 bill for the nation’s birthday celebrations may be the kind of typical ego-driven frivolous bullshit we should be used to by now, yet with his personal approval rating still in the toilet, it just seems like one more example of him going out of his way to further jeopardise already vulnerable members of his party in swing districts.

As Stephen Collinson wrote for CNN:

“The dichotomy between a president constructing a legacy in concrete and Americans struggling to pay for food and rent offers an opening to Democrats — even as the opposition party seeks to shake off its own deep unpopularity and still seems to be struggling to understand why it alienated millions of voters in 2024.”

What Trump means, likely, is that he doesn’t care about Republicans running in the midterms. Which suggests he must have a personal plan for avoiding the kind of accountability he knows will come if Democrats are in a position to impose it after November.

We may have gotten a preview of the president’s election response this weekend in a fiery Meet The Press interview with Kristen Welker.

With Republican candidate and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt losing out in his bid to become Mayor of Los Angeles, Trump attacked the state’s electoral process, stating without any evidence that the contest was “rigged”.

LeBron Antonio Hill in the Sacramento Bee writes:

“During the interview… the president ranted that the slow counting in the California Primary means the elections aren’t on the up and up. It’s the same divisive playbook he’s used before — sow doubt, divide the country, and rally his base with conspiracy.”

According to The Independent, it didn’t seem like Pratt would be conceding anytime soon.

“Pratt has insisted all is not lost, however, writing on social media Sunday, over a picture of Raman in tears: “Remember everyone…we are still in the lead, and we’ve got allllllll the way til July 6th to keep counting.”

Sounds like an all-too-familiar strategy, right? Maybe as Hill suggests, they need a new playbook.

When Welker pressed Trump for evidence of his claims of past rigged elections, the President ended the interview and walked out.

Watch Tim Miller from The Bulwark react to the interview’s lowlights.

(And do read my friend Yvonne Watterson’s take on Trump’s language as he made his exit).

Signals as to how Trump might act to resist a defeat are apparent in two job developments among his closest advisers. His nomination of Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence, temporarily replacing Tulsi Gabbard, has been widely criticised, particularly after Trump said Pulte would be specifically “investigating rigged elections.”

Also, as was widely expected, Trump tonight nominated Acting Attorney General Todd “Carte” Blanche – a staunch loyalist and Trump’s former personal lawyer, to permanently replace Pam Bondi.

As for the issues that will drive voters in the run-up to November, alongside the staggering economy, expect two to be at the forefront for many voters: data centers and detention centers.

The ongoing protests around the Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey, where detainees are on hunger strike, are examples of the political force of opposition to the administration’s immigration policies – something that even crosses political lines.

Meanwhile, the protests against data centers are not just about technology, as The Guardian reported, they’re also about democracy.

“Washington has doled out billions in lucrative federal subsidies and contracts to the cash-rich sector, bloating an AI bubble that experts warn may imperil the entire economy while prohibiting any guardrails on the fast-moving technology.

Fortunately for all of us, an unlikely and unruly coalition has emerged to resist the AI takeover by taking aim at the industry’s core infrastructure. In 2025, about 48 datacenter projects worth an estimated $156bn were blocked or stalled by local opposition. By all measures, 2026 is shaping up to be an even bigger year for the AI resistance.”

This picture from a recent march protesting data center construction manages to sum up pretty much everything at the moment:

And, of course, don’t sleep on the ongoing scandal of the Epstein investigations and revelations that could yet emerge, much as the administration continues to deny any cover-up.

See Also:

Get Out The Map

Doctor, My Eyes

There’s More Than One Way To Win (From February)

Vote While You Still Can (From November 2025)

Bondi Beached (From April)

Melania Talks, Bondi Balks (From April)

**

A King Ain’t Satisfied ‘Til He Rules Everything

Even as his triumphant Land of Hope and Dreams tour came to an end in Philadelphia last weekend, Bruce Springsteen was already in the process of further ramping up the power of America’s music – announcing, alongside Tom Morello, a one-day Power To The People festival in October, then appearing in two special shows celebrating the nation’s musical tradition ahead of the opening of his own Center in New Jersey.

Springsteen described himself as “a small link in a big chain.”

Brian Hiatt wrote at Rolling Stone as the Hope and Dreams tour arrived at Madison Square Garden that:

“The memory of the willful misunderstanding of “Born in the U.S.A.,” most notably by Ronald Reagan himself, is ever-fresh for Springsteen, so he’s crafted a setlist and accompanying speeches that are relentlessly clear in their indictment of Donald Trump and his administration.

“If his catalog is ready-made for this purpose, it’s only because of how long Springsteen has been grappling with issues that too many politicians and artists have ignored.”

But it was a superb piece by Julie Roginsky after the same show that I think perfectly summed up the sentiment of the event and especially the brilliantly curated setlist. She wrote that the “horror” of Springsteen’s catalog is that “it keeps aging well because America refuses to age better.”

“Springsteen gets what so many people still refuse to understand: Trump did not fall from the sky. This country did not become cruel overnight. The billionaires, the bad cops, the wars, the broken towns, the racial terror, the false patriotism, the men who want to be kings — they have all been there. Trump did not invent America’s sins. He just leaned into them.”

Caryn Rose, meanwhile, wrote at Salon about how the tour was a call to action.

“For a lot of people in that room, it may be their first exposure to participating in public protest. Because that is what this outing is, disguised as a Bruce Springsteen tour. It’s not about creating “a safe space,” it’s about taking an already familiar and comfortable space — a Bruce Springsteen concert! — where you can look around you and clearly see that that nice couple from Highland Park or Edina or Lake Oswego you were chatting with before the show are clearly not radical anarchists with Molotov cocktails in their pockets, but who yelled with gusto. Maybe more people are actually against this than you realized.”

It would have almost been comedic – if there is anything this administration does that we can still laugh about – that as The Boss’s epic road swing wrapped up with a rearranged show in, fittingly, the birthplace of America, Donald Trump’s own concert ostensibly marking the nation’s 250^th birthday wasn’t falling apart like a right-wing Fyre Festival.

We left the tour with one of Springsteen’s most valuable arguments – how no political party should have a monopoly on patriotism. Edward R Murrow, the great CBS reporter, once said, famously, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.”

This week, Murrow’s old network – having already dispensed with Stephen Colbert and his satirical “truthiness” – further dismantled its showpiece news outlet 60 Minutes with the ouster of long-time correspondent Scott Pelley.

In Pelley’s first interview since leaving CBS – with Lulu Garcia-Navarro at The New York Times – Pelley did not hold back.