  Inside Youth Baseball's Most Notorious Dad-On-Dad Rivalry Dads bring their sons to Baseball Heaven so they can feel like pros. The facility, situated on an industrial lot off the Long Island Expressway, has recessed dugouts, proper bullpens, and stadium lights. On weekends, the lot fills with so many cars that minivans must illegally park on the roadway verge. Cleats click-clack on pavement, and cooler wheels groan. Fathers jockey for position to record their sons' swings and fixate on pitch velocity, murmuring the incantation "What's he at? What's he at?" Between games, boys wander the park with Gatorade-stained lips and gnash on Big League Chew. Inside the café, televisions simulcast play on all seven fields. The turf is artificial, which means the grass at Baseball Heaven is always green.
Every father finds his own way to this Eden, and for Bobby Sanfilippo, it all started at a batting cage on an autumn day in 2008. Sanfilippo and his seven-year-old son were taking practice swings when a skinny man in a windbreaker marveled at the boy's bat speed. He handed Sanfilippo a business card. How would his son like to try out for a travel baseball team called the Inferno? It would be expensive at $1,200 a season and require an aggressive schedule of forty-odd games a year, some of them at Baseball Heaven. It was a far cry from the dozen or so Little League games they were playing at the time. But Sanfilippo's son—who loved baseball so much his bedroom had a custom Yankee Stadium fresco—was thrilled at the prospect. Sanfilippo was trying to figure out how to be a good dad and make his son feel special, and he figured travel baseball could play a big part in that. He had grown up in Brooklyn, in a cold house with a cold father, the owner of several bars in East New York. His dad was a rough guy, and he took little interest in Sanfilippo, who had to "grow up quick." His father got a brain tumor when Sanfilippo was fifteen, and they didn't patch things up before he died four years later. Sanfilippo was determined not to repeat the same mistakes with his little boy.
Sons grow up, and one day dads must leave Baseball Heaven, too. But Sanfilippo hasn't moved on. During his years at Baseball Heaven, he found himself enmeshed in an epic dad-on-dad rivalry with a man named John Reardon that led tabloids to call him "a Suffolk County Steinbrenner," "seriously sick," and one of the worst dads in youth-sports history. Nine years later, he still keeps a file of dirt he dug up on Reardon, his alleged victim. In fact, Sanfilippo has been waiting for someone to call him up and ask for his side of the story.   The 26 Best Affordable Clothing Stores for Stylish (and Savvy) Guys to Shop Online Money, as the adage goes, can't buy happiness. It can, however, buy your next favorite pair of WFH sweat shorts or the latest version of the walking shoes you now have reason to wear—and you don't even need a whole heap of it, either. Turns out, the most expensive version of any given item isn't always the one you should be investing in, especially when it comes to rounding out your wardrobe with a few well-priced essentials. Luckily, we live in the era of the internet, and there've never been more options when it comes to copping super-covetable menswear on the low. We've trolled the darkest depths of the worldwide web to compile a list of some of the best places to shop if you're looking for affordable alternatives to all the latest runway heat you've been admiring from afar.
 Buy This Polo Now and Wear It All Year Long The polo shirt is an undisputed style staple. Declaring it's ever going to fall out of favor entirely is a little like claiming the suit is dead—reductive and perennially premature. That said, if you've been wearing one since way back, you could be forgiven for feeling like the standard-issue stuff is getting a little stale. There's only so much piqué a person can take before beginning to yearn for some variety. Thankfully, the folks at J.Crew feel your pain, and created a reasonably priced polo so good even the most dedicated T-shirt guy will want to wear it everywhere this spring.  "No Tom Cruise!": An Author and Her Fans' Attempt to Sabotage a Hollywood Vampire In a pre-Internet firestorm, fans of the book were furious with the casting of Cruise in Interview with a Vampire. The author stoked their outrage. Cruise was hurt. The studio was furious. The movie seemed destined to flop—until it didn't.
 The 40 Best Father's Day Gifts You Can Dig Up on Amazon You buy your multivitamins and socks on Amazon. Why not a thoughtful, actually good present for dad? Of course, the site is rich with Father's Day gag gifts, but you can absolutely find cool stuff tailored to his interests as well. Here are 40 gift ideas for dads—from award-winning tech to cheap (but great!) finds—we recommend you throw into your digital shopping cart. It certainly doesn't hurt that most of them will arrive before it's too late. You'll sure as hell brighten his Father's Day when you arrive bearing one of the following.  The Best Bars in America, 2021 Bars are simultaneously a place to be by oneself and a place of community. An escape and a home away from home. That vanished as many were forced to transform into takeout joints or, worse yet, to permanently close. In a time when life and work and family bled into one another in messy ways, the bar is that much-needed extra space—physically, emotionally—that we could all use right now. Return to the office? Eh . . . not so much. A place where you can sip on a Sazerac, take a moment, catch up with the world, and decide to celebrate or brood? More of that kind of normal, please. This year's Best Bars are a reflection of the desire to experience wonder once more—in being introduced to mind-expanding wines and whiskeys, downing pints in old churches, or hunkering in jazzy spaces again—and to be grateful for places that managed to remain intrinsic to the fabric of drinking culture in America.
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Sunday, May 30, 2021
Inside Youth Baseball’s Most Infamous Dad Fight
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