As I’ve made clear before, I think there are few pleasures in life more pure than a long, uninterrupted day of sports. In that same piece, I suggested one way to get those glorious days to occur more frequently in Major League Baseball would be to radically expand home field advantage in the playoffs and play every single wildcard, divisional, and league championship game at the stadium of the team with the better record. Two and a half years later I think it’s and even better idea and I’d like to talk more about it here.
Hello everyone and thanks for stopping by. We are childhood friends who grew up, graduated college, and now have our very own blog. Living the dream, right? Since kindergarten, we’ve tackled topics ranging from travel to science to sports to food to politics to technology to religion. Expect posts on all of the above and more from us, as well as a guest column or two.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Postcards from Addis
It’s been about a year since I went to Ethiopia. As part of a University of Michigan sponsored effort (EM-PACE), I spent a month teaching two post-graduate classes at the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAIT) and got to see, eat, and do some pretty cool stuff. I had a bunch of thoughts while I was there and even managed to write some of them down, but as you can probably tell, never quite fit everything together into a post (or posts) that I was happy with.
Instead, you guys get something else: sports!
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Tuesday, April 28, 2015
A rough draft
The NBA regular season is over which means you’re either celebrating a playoff bid or you’re getting ready for the lottery.
Since the first envelope emerged from the freezer in time immemorial,* teams have schemed for ways to get ahead using the draft. Of course, the NBA has a lottery system to prevent just that. Instead of distributing picks according to record alone, the NBA introduces an element of randomness to discourage teams from losing on purpose to secure a good draft pick.
Since the first envelope emerged from the freezer in time immemorial,* teams have schemed for ways to get ahead using the draft. Of course, the NBA has a lottery system to prevent just that. Instead of distributing picks according to record alone, the NBA introduces an element of randomness to discourage teams from losing on purpose to secure a good draft pick.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
First name basis
You know how Coors Light claims to be “cold filtered?” Well Benjamin Booker’s voice is kind of like that. Except instead of good times, football, and twins, the sieve is composed of heavy gauge railroad gravel and thumbtacks. Just how much of that is effect and how much is genuine Booker family growl is a question too sophisticated for my ears to parse; the resulting sound, however, is distinctive enough regardless to at least hint at a cannon of first name guys like Bruce, Tom, and whatever astral creature did this.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Rowing the boat
Last March* Kevyn Orr, the Emergency Manager charged with cleaning up Detroit’s balance sheet came to speak at the Michigan (University) Union. Being a frequent visitor of the city, an (I like to think) alert and responsible regional denizen, and always looking for an opportunity to blow off lab,** I went.
Labels:
City Affairs,
City Planning,
Detroit,
Joe,
Kevyn Orr,
Michigan,
Policy
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Hold Steady, Part II
There is a Replacements song called “Treatment Bound.” It’s a
freewheeling number; like most of their stuff it sometimes sounds sloppy and
sometimes comes off tight, but most of all is just perpetually threatening to
fall off the highwire. It took me a while to realize it, but Paul Westerberg
and company weren’t beating their chests or telling fishing stories when they
sang, “First thing we do when we pull up / get shiiiiiitfaced drunk / try to
sober up.” They didn’t care about labels, hits, or SNL and even if The
Mats didn’t live every single line they sang, at least they could have. With
the recent release of Teeth Dreams,
The Hold Steady’s sixth album, I’ve come to a similar realization about Minnesota-born
but Brooklyn-bred group.
Labels:
Craig Finn,
Joe,
Music,
Teeth Dreams,
The Hold Steady,
The Replacements
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
The BIG EAST’s Tweet Coast Bias
On New Year’s Eve, 10 private colleges took part in the (re)inauguration
of BIG EAST basketball. The BIG EAST*
kicked off the fall season several months earlier, but the primary purpose of
the “new Big East” was basketball. If
the conference was born (again) with soccer and volleyball, New Year’s basketball
was its baptism.
*OK, that’s enough of that
all-caps thing
As a graduate of the school on the western heel of the new
Big East’s footprint, I was concerned that the new conference would neglect much
of the news out of Nebraska. Just as
Stephen Colbert does not see race, I do not see regionalism. However, with this anecdote, my friend showed
me that it is a legitimate concern. He went
to school out east and, when he introduced himself as being from Minnesota, his
fellow student responded with “Oh, cool.
Is that in Wisconsin?”* Almost a month has passed since the coronation
of the new conference and I wanted to check in on my concerns. So, as I think to myself almost daily, thank
goodness for Twitter.
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