Welcome to another week of The Runback. Have you been enjoying The Duckpin? Do you have comments or suggestions? Do you want to write for us? Let me know at theduckpin@gmail.com. And please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Thanks in advance.
Podcast Episode #28
Politicians can't fix politics. Politicians can't fix society. Who can? Listen and find out.
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News and Politics
Police Reform Bill Is Not Cut and Dry: There are no easy answers in the package sent to Governor Hogan
Culture
What About Mental Health? And What about Bob? Well, he's 30 years older.
Sports
What's It Actually Like at Camden Yards? Baseball returned to Baltimore this week. A fans-eye view of the experience.
The New Red Sox Uniforms: Baseball Enters the Golden Age of Grotesque: At some point, the Major League Baseball brain trust will realize that they don’t need gimmicks to grow the game. Sadly, that day is not today.
NFL Mock Draft 3.141592653589793: Seriously.
NCAA Should Keep Tournament Bubble: One centralized location for the Tournament could be a financial boon for the NCAA.
Shameless Plugs
I appeared with The Duckpin’s JC Braz on JB’s Drive-in Podcast Reviewing the 2008 movie The Wrestler in honor of WrestleMania week. Click here to listen (NSFW).
Old Line Wiffle Ball (my wiffle ball league) is hosting a tournament in Eldersburg on May 15th. Cash prizes to the top teams. The best player in the country is coming, so you should come check it out.
The Monday Thought(s)
There isn’t one central theme or thought for this week’s Monday Thought. Think of it more as a data dump of my brain right now:
In a follow-up to Thursday’s piece about Camden Yards, it turns out things can get more annoying. In our section for Sunday’s game, they ran out of water cups for the free complimentary water. Remember, they aren’t allowing outside food or drink to games this year. We usually bring gallons of water to drink because kids get thirsty. So paper cone cups full of ice and water are not particularly useful. But neither is no free water after the concession stands close at the end of the 7th inning either.
But what’s even more annoying? In the upper deck, a tip is required to complete a purchase. This was not the case in the lower deck on Thursday. The concession stand employees did know how to fix it. Nor did all of them know how to apply the Birdland Member discount. Which apparently had something to do with the fact that the Orioles and concessionaire Delaware North are importing employees from Ohio to work Orioles games. Usually, non-profit groups work the concession stands at games. They never had a problem working the discount. Or operating the credit card machine. I’ll be following up on this.
Donald Trump apparently made remarks at an RNC donor gathering over the weekend that shows he is still bitter, whiny, and disconnected from reality. A sane GOP would kick this loser to the curb. But alas, too many Republicans are too busy bending the knee and puckering up to worry about that.
Corollary: In a sane GOP, Matt Gaetz would have already resigned in disgrace instead of thinking that not only can he survive his latest political scandal, but thrive during it.
The Maryland General Assembly goes home tonight. Mercifully. We’ll have a lot more to say about what they have done over the course of the next few weeks.
How Anne Arundel County Health Officer Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman (remember him?) still has a job after thinking up the racist idea of distributing crack pipes in African-American communities is amazing and says a lot about wealthy horseman Steuart Pittman.
WrestleMania: A lot of people thought the first night of WrestleMania was great. Don’t count me among them. To me, it was a two-match card (Cesaro vs Rollins and the Bad Bunny match). Not surprisingly, they were the two matches I expected the most from before the show. I’m a fan of both Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks, but their main event match on Saturday was not for me. Night two was light years better as a card than the first night. But none of the matches were as good as Cole and O’Reilly at TakeOver.
The Young America’s Foundation often does good work. But they really missed the boat when they attacked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for saying that “There is racism physically built into some of our highways.” Because Buttigieg is absolutely right that there is racism built into some highways based of where highways were built, where highways were planned, and the impacts on communities. Just look at the failed Interstate 170 debacle in Baltimore. There are plenty of stupid things Buttigieg has said. This is not one of them.
And finally:
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