OZY Daily Dose

In the vernacular of minor league baseball, Atlanta Braves prospect Austin Riley was "blocked" by veterans at his positions of third base and the outfield at the start of the 2019 season. Well, nobody blocks a big bat from a big league lineup. The scouts have a saying: "You can shake a prospect tree and nine gloves and one bat will fall out." The bat is rare. You take the guy with the bat.

When Nick Pivetta was in high school in British Columbia, throwing 89 miles per hour with an elbow-damaging sidearm delivery, he looked nothing like a future big league pitcher. He didn't look good enough even for junior college baseball, where he struggled through 54 innings as a freshman.But now the 6-foot-5 right-hander is holding down a spot in the rotation for the contending Philadelphia Phillies.

Welcome to The Thread, OZY's chart-topping weekly podcast. In Season 5, The Thread explores the history-making 1999 U.S. women's soccer team and all of the unheralded athletes, policymakers and activists that made their journey possible. Subscribe now to follow The Thread on OZY.com, Spotify, Apple, Himalaya or wherever you prefer to stream your audio.July 10, 1999. A crowd of 90,185 at the Rose Bowl. A nation holding its breath, with nearly 18 million households watching on TV. Magazine covers.

On Nov. 23, 2011, I was getting ready for work. Shaving, I found a lump in my throat about the size of a gumball.Fast-forward a week. My doctor sends me to a surgeon. Fast-forward another week, two weeks before Christmas, and the surgeon tells me, "Well, you either have throat cancer or not. We will do the surgery after the holidays. Merry Christmas."So it was a Black Christmas. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

I was starting out on my nightly walk with the dog when I remembered I had a pot brownie a friend had given me. It was about 10 p.m. and I thought, "Well, why the hell not?" I ducked back in my garage, retrieved the THC treat and ate it. The brownie tasted like weed and chocolate and numbed my tongue a bit.About an hour later, I returned home with the dog and entered the house. Everyone had gone to bed, and I was starting to feel insanely stoned.

When a loved one has cancer and decides to stop treatment, we understand that they need to end their suffering. Isn’t the same true of suicide? No longer able to bear her tormented mind, Cornelia Geerts asked her psychiatrist to kill her. And on Oct. 7, 2014, he did. Geerts, 59, had been suffering from mental illness for most of her life, and in Belgium, where she lived, assisted suicide is legal for people with psychiatric illness.

I knew the abscess in the crook of my left elbow was getting bad when it became the size of a lemon and I woke up one morning having trouble extending, rotating and flexing my arm. Even in my heroin-addled, 21-year-old mind, I was like, "Oh, shit, maybe I should get this looked at."The skin covering the abscess had taken on a yellow hue and felt spongy, kind of like a zit ready to be popped. I was young and stupid, but something got through, like, "Dude, take this seriously.

Hi, Meg! How's things? You in town?That was the text I got from my friend Trana after a full day of giving massages, my "day" job. I hadn't heard from her in a while.Hi, good! How are you? I'm in town.Next text: There's a tour leaving next week.Pause ... Call my ex if you're interested in playing with Tool! Tell them I sent ya.Holy. Fucking. Shit.I called Pete, Trana's ex and Tool's manager, right away.

Dan Berger, a University of Washington history professor, was sorting through three prison-issued trunks full of old papers when an unusual document, printed in dot matrix type, caught his eye. "It was computer code," he says. Amid the numbers and symbols stood recognizable words: violence, resentment, protest. And near the top, a simple declaration: "You are the warden of a maximum security institution. There are about 1,000 men confined in your prison.

Welker Cochran, owner of San Francisco's legendary poolroom the 924 Club and an eight-time world champion in billiards, had heard about Masako Katsura. American servicemen returning from Tokyo had described her skill with a cue, and Cochran had sent his own son to scout her out in Japan (famously, his son reported: "This girl is better than you are!"). Still, he was stunned when Katsura, 5 feet tall and less than a hundred pounds, strode into his club.