The Diamondbacks vs. Twins: A Global Tragedy in Nine Innings (or, How to Export Existential Dread in a Box Score) Let’s begin with the obvious: anyone who tells you a mid-season interleague tilt between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Minnesota Twins is “just baseball” clearly hasn’t tried to explain to a Jakarta ride-share driver why…
Falcons, Ferraris, and Futures Contracts: Saudi Arabia’s Grand Tour of the 21st Century By Dave’s Locker International Desk Riyadh—If you stand still long enough on the Kingdom’s freshly painted corniche, the tarmac itself will sprout a skyscraper. One moment you’re sipping cardamom coffee, the next you’re staring at a mirrored spire shaped—one can only assume—like…
The Cardinals versus Brewers rivalry is, of course, about the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers—two Midwestern baseball outfits whose annual skirmishes are dutifully filed by American networks under “regional passion play.” Yet step back half a planet and the same fixture looks less like pastoral Americana and more like geopolitical performance art. In…
Washington D.C. — Somewhere in the global hive-mind that passes for geopolitics these days, the ligaments of a 24-year-old quarterback have been elevated to the level of a minor diplomatic crisis. Jayden Daniels, the rookie whose jersey sales alone could prop up a small island economy, left FedExField on Monday night with a rib cartilage…
Met Office Issues Strong-Winds Warning; Rest of Planet Politely Stifles a Yawn By Our Man in the Jet Stream LONDON—On Tuesday the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office, the granddaddy of national weather services and still clinging to imperial measurements like a pensioner clutching a ration book, hoisted its yellow “be aware” flag for gusts that may—brace…
Red Sox Schedule: How 162 Games of American Pastime Quietly Dictate the Planet’s Supply Chains, Diplomatic Timetables, and Your Cousin’s Wedding By the time Fenway Park’s ancient PA system crackles to life on Opening Day, the reverberations are felt well beyond Boston’s clam-chowder belt. In Singapore, a container-load of David Ortiz-branded oven mitts is rerouted…
Tesla’s Share Price: A Global Mood Ring for the Age of Uncertainty By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently hiding in a Geneva safe house after asking too many questions) If you want to know how the planet is feeling, skip the UN General Assembly and just glance at Tesla’s stock ticker. On any given morning…
Austin Maddox and the Peculiar Global Pastime of Watching Americans Implode By “Scotch” McReady, roaming correspondent for Dave’s Locker If the planet were a dimly lit bar, Austin Maddox would be the guy who just shattered a pint glass and is now insisting the shards prove his masculinity. The rest of us—nursing our own watered-down…
Miami Vice: How a Pastel Fever Dream Became the Planet’s Operating Manual By Dave’s International Affairs Desk (currently wearing linen and pretending the air-con works) In 1984, while the rest of the planet was busy rehearsing nuclear winter, the United States exported a different apocalypse: two undercover cops who wore more shoulder pad than aircraft…
If you were watching the White Sox and the Guardians on Monday night from a bar in Reykjavík, you might have wondered why the broadcast cut to a split-screen of grainy drone footage over the Red Sea every time José Ramírez stepped to the plate. The bartender—half-Icelandic, half-exasperated—would shrug and mutter something about “global bandwidth…
Friday Night Football: The World’s Most Expensive Ritual Sacrifice, Now in 4K It’s 7:07 p.m. somewhere on the North American continent—exactly the moment when the global balance of power tilts imperceptibly toward whichever high school can afford better LED pylons. While the rest of the planet either sleeps or schemes, a small town’s entire GDP…
Global dispatch, Arlington, Texas – Somewhere between the tenth replay of a seagull dive-bombing a nacho tray and the thirty-eighth mention of “post-season drought,” the Rangers and Mets reminded planet Earth that, yes, the United States still exports baseball the way it exports Marvel films and questionable foreign policy. From a café terrace in Lisbon…
