By All-Pro Reels – https://www.flickr.com/photos/joeglo/49571481023/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116269868

In the second half of our 2023 baseball preview podcast, Scott, Erik, Dave and I talked about the delicate line between tanking and rebuilding, the ethics of overloading in a potential championship year, the place of the current Houston Astros among the most dominant teams of the last sixty years, and our thoughts on who might actual win the National and American League pennants. Here is the transcript.

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By Mogami Kariya – https://www.flickr.com/photos/kariyamogami/52251704848/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121754932

Happy Opening Day! In celebration, Scott, Erik, DJW, and myself casted a pod previewing the baseball season. We didn’t do the traditional division by division preview, but instead talked through some areas of interest. Part I, in order:

* Rule changes

* Shohei Otani and the WBC

* Players who might retire after this year

* The Seattle Mariners

You can find the transcript here (software update has made it a bit more readable). We’ll post Part II early next week.

The LGM podcast is now available from a variety of corporate overlords, so please perform freedom by making your consumer choice. We would very much appreciate reviews, whether of the thoughtful written variety or just by clicking on the appropriate star. The podcast is time-consuming and expensive, so also contemplate tossing a nickel in the jar.

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For our latest podcast, we interview Erika Bsumek, Professor of History at the University of Texas, about her brand new book The Foundations of Glen Canyon Dam: Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau. In the conversation, we discuss the ways that Glen Canyon Dam was the culmination of a century of dispossession of the tribes, largely by the Mormon population of Utah and northern Arizona, but with a heavy assist from the federal government. We also talk about the different infrastructures, not just the dam itself, but legal and political infrastructures, dispossess the tribes in the Southwest. Finally, we put this in the context of the struggle to create and then preserve Bears Ears National Monument and how the tribes fight back against the dispossession they face. Check it out!

Here is the transcript.

Paul discussed his latest book, A Fan’s Life, with Rob and myself in the latest LGM pod. Here’s the transcript. It’s a fun discussion of the stubborn irrationality of fandom, old-school message boards, and Bill James eureka moments, and if you enjoy it you’ll enjoy Paul’s book too.

The LGM podcast is now available from a variety of corporate overlords, so please perform freedom by making your consumer choice. We would very much appreciate reviews, whether of the thoughtful written variety or just by clicking on the appropriate star. The podcast is time-consuming and expensive, so also contemplate tossing a nickel in the jar.

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For the latest podcast, we interview Bartow Elmore, from Ohio State University, on his 2021 book Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future. Other than just discuss the many horrible things with which Monsanto has been involved (Agent Orange! PCBs! Roundup!), we also talk about why environmentalists focus on the most ridiculous things (GMOs) when it comes to Monsanto, how a corporation would be so naive as to allow a historian to see their records, and what happens when your book on a corporation gets the attention of the corporation itself and one of their VPs shows up at your house to chat with you about it. This is a very good podcast and you will enjoy it a lot.

Transcript

The LGM podcast is now available from a variety of corporate overlords, so please perform freedom by making your consumer choice. We would very much appreciate reviews, whether of the thoughtful written variety or just by clicking on the appropriate star. The podcast is time-consuming and expensive, so also contemplate tossing a nickel in the jar.

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In our latest podcast, we interview Daniel Hatcher from the University of Baltimore’s Civic Advocacy Clinic about his brand new book Injustice, Inc.: How America’s Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor. It is a powerful exploration of how the entire system that is supposed to look after children uses them to make money. It’s an endless cycle of exploitation, justified by the need for underfunded agencies to provide for their own resources. This is not exactly a happy go lucky conversation. Nor should it be. This is absolutely outrageous and the more you know about the details, the more you will want to do something about it. So check it out and then get angry!

The LGM podcast is now available from a variety of corporate overlords, so please perform freedom by making your consumer choice. We would very much appreciate reviews, whether of the thoughtful written variety or just by clicking on the appropriate star. The podcast is time-consuming and expensive, so also contemplate tossing a nickel in the jar.

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Our podcast is here for those who missed it. Since I was actually in Vegas when the line opened I made an actual bet, and it was Chiefs +110 on the basis that in what is essentially a coin flip matchup I would take the vig. I think Aaron Schatz’s bottom line is correct:

This game is as close as you think it is, but if I have to make a pick, I have a slight lean towards taking the Chiefs. Here’s how I explained it for ESPN Chalk earlier this week. First of all, if all else is equal you would tend to side with the team with the better quarterback, and that’s the Chiefs. Second, as I explained in the intro, the extra week off seems to favor Andy Reid’s strengths over Nick Sirianni’s strengths. Third—and this one only applies if you’re looking for a pick against the spread—it’s really unlikely that this game comes down to a single point but if it does, I might as well go with the team that gets the extra point.

That being said, it won’t be a surprise if the Eagles win this game and take home the Lombardi Trophy. The surprise will be if one of these teams blows out the other one. As long as both Hurts and Mahomes are on the field, Super Bowl LVII should be a very good, very close contest.

For your Super Bowl reading, I strongly recommend this essay by Rany Jazayerli about Andy Reid, who has already established himself as one of the very greatest coaches in league history. As Jazayerli explains, after an excellent run in Philly Reid took over a smoking crater 2-14 team that was one of the worst post-merger teams and immediately turned it into one of the most competitive in the league, all before Mahomes arrived:

Yet even the most optimistic Chiefs fan understood that however good Reid and new GM John Dorsey—who was simultaneously hired away from the Packers to replace Pioli—were at their jobs, this would not be a quick fix. You don’t turn the worst team in the NFL into a contender overnight.

But Reid and Dorsey turned the Chiefs into a contender, seemingly overnight. They almost immediately traded for veteran quarterback Alex Smith and began rebuilding the roster: They used the no. 1 pick in the 2013 draft on left tackle Eric Fisher, who protected Mahomes’s blind side when the Chiefs won a Super Bowl seven years later, and a third-round pick on Travis Kelce, who in a decade in Kansas City has crafted a Hall of Fame résumé. (In subsequent years, the Chiefs would go on to draft elite players like defensive end Dee Ford, cornerback Marcus Peters, center Mitch Morse, and receiver Tyreek Hill; while none of those players remain on the Chiefs today, they helped fortify a depleted roster around Smith and had set the Chiefs up for success when Mahomes arrived.)

The Andy Reid era began in 2013 with nine straight wins on their way to an 11-5 record and a playoff appearance (which they lost, blowing a 28-point lead to the Colts, because they were still the Chiefs, and that would take time to overcome). The following year, the Chiefs went 9-7 and missed the playoffs by one game, and they started the 2015 season 1-5. Reid steadied the ship and made sure the season didn’t completely der...

By All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA – Patrick Mahomes, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112095786

Here’s our latest football podcast, discussing last week’s games, some of the big head coaching changes, and of course the Big Game. There were some digressions, including discussions of the football hall of fame, the baseball hall of fame, Korean food, and exceptionally heavy beer. Unfortunately the transcript did not save.

The LGM podcast is now available from a variety of corporate overlords, so please perform freedom by making your consumer choice. We would very much appreciate reviews, whether of the thoughtful written variety or just by clicking on the appropriate star. The podcast is time-consuming and expensive, so also contemplate tossing a nickel in the jar.

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with my friend John Winn Miller about his new book The Hunt for the Peggy C. The book falls into a few different genres, but I was most interested in asking John about how he approached submarine fiction, which is certainly one of my favorite categories of historical fiction. We talked a bit about the genre and about the process before moving on to a discussion of how the book might be adapted in different media. If you’re interested in World War II or in submarine stories more generally, give it a listen and give some consideration to buying the book, which is quite good. Here is the transcript; I remind you that anyone quoting the transcript without confirming from the audio is destined for causeway between the 8th and 9th circles of Hell.

The LGM podcast is now available from a variety of corporate overlords, so please perform freedom by making your consumer choice. We would very much appreciate reviews, whether of the thoughtful written variety or just by clicking on the appropriate star. The podcast is time-consuming and expensive, so also contemplate tossing a nickel in the jar.

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For our latest podcast, we talked to Joshua Rothman, historian at the University of Alabama, about his recent book The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America. This is a tremendously powerful book about the horrors of the domestic slave trade and the people who operated the largest slave trading company in America. In this podcast, we explore the myths around the slave trade, the incredible cruelty of the practice and what this says about America then and now, the legacy of cruelty in America, the unwillingness of the nation to face up to its past, and what is like to teach these subjects in a blood red state. It’s a good one and you want to hear it, even though the subject matter is not always easy and fun.

The LGM podcast is now available from a variety of corporate overlords, so please perform freedom by making your consumer choice. We would very much appreciate reviews, whether of the thoughtful written variety or just by clicking on the appropriate star. The podcast is time-consuming and expensive, so also contemplate tossing a nickel in the jar.

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