Roki Sasaki’s 19-strikeout perfect game—hurled last April for the Chiba Lotte Marines against the Orix Buffaloes—arrived just as the planet was debating whether World War III should be scheduled before or after the next climate summit. In that context, a 20-year-old Japanese kid painting the outside corner at 101 mph felt almost quaint, like watching…
Springfield Cardinals: A Minor-League Club with Major-League Geopolitical Baggage By Our Man in the Balkans, nursing a lukewarm Budweiser and a warmer grudge against hope The world’s attention this week is, predictably, elsewhere. In Geneva, diplomats argue over the exact shade of beige that will describe the next non-binding cease-fire. In the South China Sea,…
SUKI WATERHOUSE AND THE GLOBAL SOFT-POWER SYNDROME A Dispatch from the Frontlines of Manufactured Relevance Dateline: Everywhere Wi-Fi reaches and self-regard outruns bandwidth In 2024, the phrase “international incident” no longer requires embassies, trade tariffs, or even a stray missile. All it takes is a British model-actress-singer-entrepreneur-candle-magnate named Suki Waterhouse posting a grainy Polaroid of…
Club América: How a Mexican Football Club Became a Mirror for the World’s Class Wars By Eduardo “Eddie” Valdés, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Mexico City—If the planet ever needs a crash course in late-stage capitalism, it could do worse than to spend ninety minutes at Estadio Azteca on a Sunday night. There, amid the sulfur-yellow…
PARIS – Somewhere between the charred remains of the 24-hour news cycle and the latest cease-fire that isn’t, the world briefly paused to ask a question of truly planetary consequence: who, exactly, just seized the Head of Household key on Big Brother? For the uninitiated—blessed souls who still use their evenings to read books or…
Somewhere between the Baltic’s rusting shipyards and a Manila karaoke bar at 3:17 a.m., the term “seawolf” has mutated from nautical folklore into a corporate euphemism for the modern privateer. These are not the cuddly, whiskered cousins of the otter you’re picturing. Picture instead a floating LinkedIn profile with a flag of convenience, a shell…
Durham, North Carolina – In the grand, slow-motion car-crash we politely call “global politics,” it is often the quiet governors of mid-sized U.S. states who remind the rest of the planet how truly provincial the world’s super-power can be. Enter Roy Cooper: a man whose name sounds like an Oxfordshire estate agent but who, since…
Vince’s “Big Brother Girlfriend”: A Global Parable of Surveillance, Lust, and the End of Privacy By Diego Valdez, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker In the grand, gilded cage we politely call Earth, nothing travels faster than a salacious rumor—except, perhaps, a government subpoena. So when a grainy screenshot of Vince (surname still embargoed by three jurisdictions…
**The Gentle Existential Crisis of Ugo Humbert, or How France Accidentally Exported a Metaphor** PARIS—While the planet busied itself with the usual apocalyptic buffet—proxy wars, algorithmic tyranny, record-breaking heat that makes your shoes melt to asphalt—France’s 25-year-old tennis understudy Ugo Humbert has been quietly staging the most Gallic of rebellions: losing spectacularly, winning accidentally, and…
Jorge Polanco and the Geopolitics of a Utility Infielder by “Buzzard” Beaumont, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker The first time most Europeans heard the name Jorge Polanco, they assumed he was either a Colombian striker or the latest cryptocurrency rug-pull. Instead, the 30-year-old switch-hitting infielder from San Pedro de Macorís—population 290,000, GDP roughly equal to a…
Santos-Tijuana: The Border Derby Where Football Meets the Global Black-Market Bazaar By “El Comandante” – Dave’s Locker, Southern Bureau TIJUANA – Somewhere between the duty-free tequila stands and the dental-clinic hawkers, a modest stadium rises above the rust-colored fence that politely separates First-World appetites from Third-World wages. Every few weeks Estadio Caliente hosts Club Tijuana…
BANGKOK – Somewhere between the durian stalls of Chatuchak Market and the 24-hour Korean karaoke joints that now dot Sukhumvit, a 26-year-old from Southern California is pitching his way into the collective consciousness of insomniacs from Lagos to Lima. Ryne Nelson—yes, the name sounds like a Scandinavian law firm—has become Arizona’s accidental ambassador to the…
