The Los Angeles Dodgers won game 7 of the World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays last night in one of the best baseball games I've ever seen—though, for obvious reasons, not nearly as exciting as game 7 of the World Series in 2016.
The Dodgers looked buried early, falling behind 3-0 when a hobbled Bo Bichette took an exhausted Shohei Ohtani deep in the third inning. They seemed finished until the ninth, clawing back within one but never completely erasing the deficit — until Rojas saved the season with his game-tying home run to left.
Rojas saved the day for a second time on a ground ball at second base, fielding it from a drawn-in position before firing for a force-out at home plate. The next batter, Ernie Clement, sent a fly ball to deep left-center. Kiké Hernández and defensive replacement Andy Pages collided at the warning track. Hernández hit the deck. Pages completed the catch.
The game ended in the bottom of the 11th with a perfectly-executed 6-4-3 double play.
I had been rooting for the Blue Jays, but only because I thought that this year would be exactly the right year for the only Canadian team to win it all.
But it occurred to me, this may have been the first World Series ever in which the President of the United States was not welcome in either city.
But today? 10/10 would recommend!
Ah, ha ha. Ha.
Everything else today has a proportion of funny to not-funny that we should work on a bit more:
- The administration served up two full helpings of corruption today: indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James as payback for prosecuting the OAFPOTUS, and finalizing a $20 billion gift to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's friends under the guise of propping up the Argentine Peso.
- US District Judge April Perry (NDIL) has blocked the National Guard from entering Chicago pending new arguments on the 24th.
- Julia Ioffe reports on what the troops sent to Portland, Ore., think of being sent there; Jeff Maurer reports on the twerking inflatable dinosaurs taunting ICE there.
- Paul Krugman patiently explains that, in fact, everything economists predicted about the OAFPOTUS's tariffs has happened, even though what non-economists claimed they predicted didn't: "The point is that corporations are very good at finding ways to avoid paying taxes, especially when the rules are complicated and the tax collectors don’t have enough resources to track down their clever strategies."
- Why is billionaire and scary dude Peter Thiel warning about the Antichrist? Seems, you know, unhinged. In fact, he sounds a lot like Charlotte Iserbyt. What is it with these people?
- Quico Toro has lived in Japan for a year, which gave him an unhappy view of Amtrak. (Though, frankly, living in any other OECD country except Canada would do that.)
- The Cubs beat the Milwaukee Brewers yesterday, so the two teams go on to a final, fifth game tomorrow at Miller Park.
Finally, Loyola University Chicago's Sister Jean has died at 106. She was the official team chaplain of the Loyola Ramblers men's basketball team, and well-loved throughout the University.
I had a really busy weekend, leading to the first time in years when I went 2 days without posting. The highlight yesterday was the San Diego Padres beating the Chicago White Sox 3-2 at Rate Field. Both of the Sox runs were walked in, highlighting the Padres' stellar defense and hitting and the Padres' dismal pitching:
Against San Diego starter Michael King and a Padres' bullpen highlighted by three All-Star relievers, the White Sox totaled five hits and nine walks. But an 0-for-11 day with runners in scoring position resulted in their eighth loss in the last nine games.
The White Sox fell into an early hole in the second inning due to a self-inflicted mistake. After giving up singles to Jackson Merrill and Gavin Sheets, White Sox starter Sean Burke's errant pickoff attempt to first base allowed a run to score.
The Padres added a second run in the second, thanks to a single from Jake Cronenworth. Burke made a mistake in the third, leaving a fastball over the heart of the plate to All-Star Fernando Tatis Jr., whose 432-foot blast gave San Diego a 3-0 lead.
A prime chance to cut into the Padres' lead came in the sixth, when the White Sox loaded the bases with zero outs after singles by Colson Montgomery and Miguel Vargas, plus a walk from Edgar Quero. Despite the golden opportunity, they were unable to bring any runs home. Lenyn Sosa popped out, and Curtis Mead and Michael A. Taylor struck out against All-Star reliever Adrián Morejón.
The game also included a perfectly-executed double steal by San Diego, something you almost never see in the MLB. The Padres need just one more win to clinch a playoff spot.
Other than Friday, when I plan to do my annual 42.2-km walk, posting should return to normal this week.
The Cubs beat the Pirates this afternoon, securing them a spot in the post-season for the first time in five years:
Four and a half years after the Cubs dismantled their last championship core, they finally made it to the playoffs.
The Cubs clinched a postseason berth with a 8-4 win against the Pirates on Wednesday, sweeping the three-game set to officially end a four-year playoff drought.
This year, the Cubs boasted one of the best run-scoring offenses in the majors in the first half of the season. And though that group cooled off after the All-Star break, the Cubs still entered Wednesday with the fourth-best record in MLB.
As of today, the Cubs, Brewers, and Phillies are the only three teams that are certain of post-season play. The next 11 days will be interesting, especially with the last remaining Canadian team ahead by 5.
On Sunday, I will attend the White Sox's last home game of the season. They have a chance to hit 100 losses between now and then, a feat much less impressive than the Colorado Rockies' 110 losses so far. (I have never seen a team 43 games back before. Wow!)
After winning 9 straight on the road for the first time since 1998, the New York Yankees (76-61, 3 GB) lost to the Chicago White Sox (49-88, 30.5 GB) yesterday at Rate Field in Chicago. And yet, it was a beautiful day for a baseball game!
My cousin got the tickets for $32 each, and they came with a hot dog, chips, cookie, and bottled drink. Each. He also said he popped for a 10-ticket package, good for any home games next season (except against the Cubs), for $14 each. Desperate times!
We also discussed why they oriented Rate Field southeast, which, as you can see in the photo above, has no view whatsoever. The original Comiskey Park pointed northeast so that fans sitting in the equivalent upper-deck seats we had yesterday would have seen the skyline:
Rate Field, which opened as "New Comiskey Park" in 1991, ended what my cousin and I call the "Ugly Years." My least-favorite parks on the 30-Park Geas were built between 1962 and 1991: Shea Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Kauffmann Stadium, Oakland Coliseum, and Tropicana Field. (Oddly, Angel Stadium was also built in 1966, but it has a beautiful view that makes up for the clunky architecture.)
I could go on about Mid-Century and Brutalist architecture at length, but I'd rather go play outside. Autumn has arrived, and the weather is perfect!
This weekend, I expect to finish a major personal (non-technical) project I started on June 15th, walk 20 km (without Cassie), and thanks to the desperation of the minor-league team on the South Side of Chicago, attend a Yankees game. It helps that the forecast looks exactly like one would want for the last weekend of summer: highs in the mid-20s and partly cloudy skies.
I might have time to read all of these things as well:
Meanwhile, my birthday ribs order got delayed. One of the assistant butchers backed into a meat grinder, so they got behind in their work. He was the biggest ass in the shop until he recently got unseated, so I don't feel too bad for making him the butt of my jokes.
G'nite.
Chicago Cubs legendary second-baseman Ryne Sandberg has died:
Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg, a Cubs legend and the architect of the famous “Sandberg Game,” passed away Monday at his home after a battle with cancer. He was 65.
Sandberg’s breakout 1984 season couldn’t have come at a better time for the Cubs. The “Sandberg Game,” when that year’s NL MVP went 5-for-6 and hit two game-tying home runs off Cardinals closer Bruce Sutter, served as a turning point in the season. The Cubs would go on to clinch the division, snapping a 39-year playoff drought.
Sandberg announced in January of 2024 that he’d been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. With treatment, he was cancer-free by August, sharing the good news on Instagram: “Rang the Bell this morning! WE did it, WE won!”
Four months later, however, his cancer had returned, and Sandberg resumed intensive treatment.
We've lost a lot of good people this month. It's getting distressing.
It looks like the temperature peaked at Inner Drive Technology World HQ a few minutes ago, hitting 32.7°C with a heat index of 42.3°C. The 26.4°C dew point is higher than I like the temperature to be. It may cool off later today when the thunderstorms finally start, but as I would like to get home from the office before then, I will have to go back out into this soupy mess soon.
The only story of note this afternoon: Wrigley Field will host the 2027 All-Star Game. That's pretty cool, especially for the Wrigley neighbors who usually get insanely loud concerts over the All-Star Break.
As Crash Davis said to Annie Savoy all those years ago: A player on a streak has to respect the streak. Well, I'm on a coding streak. This week, I've been coding up a storm for my day job, leaving little time to read all of today's stories:
Finally, Ernie Smith, who also had a childhood pastime of reading maps for fun, examines why MapQuest became "the RC Cola" of mapping apps. Tl;dr: corporate mergers are never about product quality.
My day got away from me yesterday afternoon, so all this shiznit piled up:
Finally, it turns out the principal difference between the 12-year-saga to replace the Ravenswood train station and the 15-year-saga to build the Peterson/Ridge station was that the Ravenswood station actually started construction 13 years ago. Streetsblog explains in detail why Chicago can't have nice transit things, and why I may never get to ride on a fully-electrified express train from Evanston to the Loop.