Ben Rortvedt: The Accidental Geopolitical Constant in a World Falling Apart By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between a drone strike in the Red Sea and another celebrity tequila launch, Ben Rortvedt—backup catcher, career .190 hitter, owner of a name that sounds like a Scandinavian flat-pack shelving unit—keeps turning up on Major-League rosters like an unexplained…
The Philadelphia Phillies, for those who still believe baseball is more than a taxpayer-funded real-estate hustle, have quietly become a small but telling barometer of late-stage global capitalism. While the world’s attention toggles between the next missile test and the latest crypto-meltdown, the Phillies—those red-pinstriped avatars of American pastoral nostalgia—are busy exporting existential dread disguised…
SEATTLE—While the planet’s stock markets convulsed like a drunk on a mechanical bull and diplomats traded insults thick enough to butter bread, some sixty thousand souls squeezed into T-Mobile Park on Tuesday to ask the only question that still unites a fractured world: can the Mariners string together more hits than the Houston Astros before…
The Phillies and Marlins, two clubs whose combined payroll wouldn’t cover Mbappé’s weekly dry-cleaning bill, squared off again last night in South Philadelphia. From an international vantage point—say, a cramped sports bar in Naples where the espresso is stronger than the Wi-Fi—this NL East tilt carries all the geopolitical weight of a UN resolution on…
