Matt and Sam talk to David Roth about baseball, why conservatives love it, and why we do too.
At long last, an episode about baseball—America's national pastime, and a sport that conservatives in the United States seem to especially love. To understand baseball's appeal, both to conservatives and the rest of us, Matt and Sam are joined by David Roth of Defector Media, a brilliant, funny writer who also is a long suffering Mets fan. Topics include: the start of the MLB playoffs, baseball's interesting place in American history, varieties of conservative baseball fans, and more!
Sources:
George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (Macmillan, 1990)
"Foul Ball," New York Review of Books, June 1991
Donald Kagan, "George Will's Baseball—A Conservative Critique," Public Interest, Fall 1990
Tim Marchman, "Did George Will’s Men at Work Anticipate Baseball’s Statistical Revolution?" Slate, April 27, 2010
David Bentley Hart, "A Perfect Game," First Things, August 2010
Greg Hillis, "Quit Trying to 'Fix' Baseball," Commonweal, March 27, 2018
David Roth, "Replacement-Level Billionaires," The Baffler, March 2020
Leander Schaerlaeckens, "Was Donald Trump Good at Baseball?" Slate, May 5, 2020
Michael Serazio, "The GOP hates baseball now. But it has always been a conservative sport," Washington Post, April 7, 2021
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