The Opener

1. After one youth baseball team from Venezuela was unable to secure visas to participate in a Little League tournament, a different Venezuelan team has been granted a “national exemption” to travel to the Little League World Series this month. According to The Athletic, a Republican senator in Pennsylvania and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had to get involved to secure an exception to President Trump’s “travel ban,” which includes Venezuela. 
2. We didn’t post about specifically the Yankees’ cosmically cursed post-deadline meltdown in which four of their new additions — three relievers and outfielder José Caballero — cost them a crazy game as part of their sweep in Miami. But after he gave up the walk-off homer in another late inning loss on Monday night against the Rangers, the Yankees opted to demote one of those new relievers, Jake Bird. In a vacuum, that move is not newsworthy — teams cycle through bullpen arms by design — but it’s reflective of how a reigning pennant winner and probable postseason team is doing a lot of ugly losing lately. More on that in a moment.
3. This is not about baseball, but feels like either a sea change or else a creeping continuation of the blurred lines between leagues and media partners that the NFL will literally own part of ESPN, which is directly affiliated with a sportsbook, soon. 

Recently, I put out a call to hear from front office employees about how some teams have taken down their publicly available front office directories. This had been advised by MLB as a "cybersecurity" measure, but the handful of front office employees I've heard from since then were not happy about the decision. They had some cynical suspicions about the motivation of specific teams and also they just didn't like being made anonymous. So now I want to reiterate my interest in speaking to front office employees in case there are people out there for whom that reaction resonates. If it does: hrkeyser@gmail.com or hrkeyser.09 on Signal.

Do you have to hate the Savannah Bananas if you love (real) baseball? 

I get it. It sort of feels like everyone is seeing the Savannah Bananas except literally anyone you’ve ever met and, frankly, they would never. But, and I’m sorry to get political here, turns out we’re not great at extrapolating how universal our own opinions are in a country of 340 million. Many of whom are lining up to witness Banana Ball — a popularity that is (I’m sorry!) newsworthy. 

I’m subtweeting (or sub…skeeting?) a lot of people I like and respect with this analysis even though I’m aligned with their disdain. Banana Ball gives me the same sensation as finding out that someone I’ve never heard of has 50 million followers on social media and now they’re hosting the Oscars or determining the next presidential election. Like the waves of culture are crashing over me and it’s already too late to catch them in any meaningful way.

But the moral is the same original conundrum: the culture contains multitudes. Major League Baseball is going to continue to exist and also the Savannah Bananas are a successful upstart option that is worth covering. What I want, though, is for that coverage to advance beyond get a load of this incredulity or comparisons to MLB. 

For instance: