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. |
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| The Grownup's Guide to Taking Shots (and Not Looking Like an Asshole) |
It's undeniable: Shots have emerged as a big part of our post-pandemic social lives. And it's not just a college thing. Why now? Why the sudden surge in slamming 'em back? Well, why not? It's a quick and efficient shared experience. A good icebreaker after a couple years of isolation. A round of shots is a way to signal Let's have fun fast. They force you to muster some courage, a bit of adrenaline. And then, once you've placed the small empty glass back on the table, a soothing warmth. For a brief instant, you feel aware of your body. You feel a little more alive. You may laugh. You may grimace. But you won't know until you take your shot. Shots may come at that point in the evening when you need to rev things into a higher gear. But they can also help you take things down a notch—say, with a bit of an amaro or even wine. Indeed, not all shots need to be high-proof cowboy stuff. Below, you'll learn how to be the type of knowledgeable shot-taker who can calibrate your pour for any occasion. |
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How the ManningCast Improbably Became One of the Best Comedies on TV |
"It really bugs me how funny you are." Bill Burr knows funny when he sees it, whether it's in another comedian, or in a pair of Super Bowl winning quarterback brothers who have become an unlikely—and reliable—source of humor every week. Last Monday night, the Cleveland Browns were rolling a surprise upset victory over cross-state rivals, the Cincinnati Bengals. There was absolutely no reason for anyone outside of Ohio, gamblers, and fantasy football players (thank you, Tee Higgins!) to be watching the final minutes of this 32-13 blowout—unless you were watching the ManningCast. While most announcers struggle in a lopsided game, Peyton and Eli Manning thrive. |
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Understands the Power of Grief |
Following Chadwick Boseman's death, Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole rewrote the entirety of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In a powerful funeral that both mourns and celebrates his legacy, the film quickly centers on those who were left behind. Namely, the all-female army of Wakanda. Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Princess Shuri (Letitia Wright), and General Okoye (Danai Gurira) eat up every scene they get in Wakanda Forever. Shuri and Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) carry the largest emotional beats, and the film shines best when it showcases the depths of their grief. It's easy to get wrapped up in the Black Panther-ness of it all, but audiences may have forgotten that Shuri was originally introduced as the smartest person in the this comic book universe. That giant intellect is why her inability to save her brother from his mysterious "illness" tortures her character in Wakanda Forever. Heartbreak and regret sends her down a path that harkens back to nearly the same dilemma that T'Challa faced with Killmonger—and face to face with the sequel's new antagonist. |
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Our Clean Energy Future Depends on Big-Ass Power Lines |
A true clean-energy transition will depend on big, centralized solar and wind facilities, and the most productive ones will often be located far away from our population centers. Broadly speaking, they'll be in more rural areas in the middle of the country, while the majority of people live on the coasts. We need to move clean power from the places where we'll harvest the bulk of it to the places where we'll consume the bulk of it. To do that, we'll need to transform our power grid from more local systems serving local needs into something that more closely resembles the Interstate Highway System. We need to build some big-ass power lines, called transmission lines, to carry huge amounts of power across long distances. |
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Hear Charles P. Pierce Sort Out Just What in the Hell Is Going On, Election-wise |
We are once again pleased to invite Esquire members in good standing to attend an airing of political wisdom and insight in this here shebeen. This coming Tuesday, November 15, from 1 p.m. ET to 2 p.m. ET, journalist, raconteur, and peripatetic curmudgeon Charles P. Pierce, will dissect, diagnose, detail and deconstruct the results (or what-have-you) of the midterm election in whatever condition we happen to find them. |
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