WCS 39: Willie Mays After Rickwood

Too: Taco Madness + Trump’s 2025 + PDX women strike Monday

The Willie Mays image lodged in my mind’s eye last night was that of the 17-year-old “Say Hey Kid” smacking a single in the last Negro League World Series. Sure, that’s because the Giants 6-5 loss to the Cardinals game was played in the very same ballpark, a Birmingham chapel of living history.

A living history chapel that—admit it—you knew nothing about until this week. Rickwood Field, the nation’s oldest baseball venue, enveloped Major League Baseball fans with its its scope of content. Even before The Greatest Living Baseball Player passed away, venerable baseball scribe Tom Verducci called last night’s contest “one of its most important regular-season games ever.”

Verducci is correct on account of all of the energetic white supremacy coursing through the 2024 American body politic. The people at the heart of baseball’s aging fan base desperately need to be put in touch with its racial past, so that they don’t turn over the national reins to a fiend in December.

In May MLB stunned lots of us, as it began counting Negro Leagues statistics as equal and legitimate and combining them with the Babe Ruths and Ty Cobbs. Arguably no facet in human sports has ever been more fussed over and treasured than MLB stats by baseball fans. They are the definition of institutional.

Baseball did what’s right.

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Since childhood, I had understood that those Black players were as good or better than the ones with MLB backing. Still, actually seeing the sports overseers acknowledge this, er, knowledge was as shocking as hearing the President say “white supremacy” at his inauguration. Or seeing sympathy beyond the nation’s margin for the Palestinians.

Sports stats are usually the definition of meaningless, but on this Friday that 17-year-old’s base hit matters as much as anything Joe DiMaggio or Honus Wagner ever did. By association, that stat now means everything.

10 Look Who’s Burning Now!

Cal Fire

Cal Fire is saying that over 90,000 of the state’s acres have already burned, with half of the damage coming this month. The hot and dry weather expected this weekend won’t do anything to reverse the developing pattern.
CBS News

• The two biggest blazes are the Sites Fire, which has burned 19,000 acres in Colusa County, and the Post Fire, a conflagration near Gorman that’s roasted over 15,000 acres.

• On Wednesday, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning, which it does when the combination of warm temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds fuel the risk of fire danger. 

Lil Hits

• Folks in the Northwest are grappling with how to discuss Neil Goldschmidt, who led Oregon into its progressive politics present, but also raped a girl for three decades.
  Willamette Week

• On Tuesday, Celtics fan Mike Schur shouted, “Light the beam!” Sacramento, your thing is getting away from you.
  The Dan Le Batard Show

Two years after Roe. v Wade was struck down, organizers are asking women to refrain from working or going to school, if possible, on Monday.

9 Who wants to see The M’s in the World Series?

Even after dropping two in a row in Cleveland this week, Seattle is running away with the American League West. At 44-33, the team has baseball’s biggest divisional lead and experts wondering if Seattle is an actual championship contender.
Seattle Sports