Ironically, I grew up not liking Passover. The stodgy formality seemed alien in our otherwise mostly secular family. I saw the Four Children as the Haggadah’s horoscope and feared being cast as simple or wicked rather than wise. And it never sat right with me that a holiday commemorating freedom had so many restrictions and rules. Somewhere along the way it became the primary demonstration of my connection to the Jewish faith. I’ve never fully been able to put my finger on why.

The other time I feel similarly inspired is while traveling abroad — as when we went to Barcelona earlier this year. A Jewish presence in the city is attested as far back as the early Roman colonization. To dramatically oversimplify many centuries of history, our people had it pretty good for a while, at least by the low standards of medieval Christendom. Of course the late Middle Ages were not a good time to be non-Catholic in Iberia. By 1400 the Catalonian Jewish community was effectively obliterated: expelled, forcibly converted, or killed. Recent scholarship has sought to rediscover and celebrate this slice of Jewish history, now preserved and recounted in museums around Barcelona. You can even visit the site of the central hub for Jewish life in Roman Barcino nearly two millennia ago, Sinagoga Major.

A significant portion of the Judaica artifacts we saw were related to Passover: Seder plates, Kiddush cups, Haggadot. I found myself profoundly moved by these displays. Of course Jews celebrated Pesach back then. But to see the actual ritual implements felt so personal and intimate. I could picture these families from so long ago filling their plates with the same food, reciting the same prayers as they filled their cups. I wondered if the kids around the table were as transfixed by the color and detail of their Haggadah’s illustrations as I was by the minimalist wine-red brushstrokes in the one my family used, and if they too had crossed their fingers in hopes of reading for the wise son.

This experience unlocked a realization for me. I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but I came away believing that my acquired passion for Passover stems from an innate connection to the past, a continuity of tradition with countless generations before.

A few weeks after our trip, my great aunt Lois passed away. This Passover is my first time cooking for a Seder, or preparing a festive meal of any occasion, without calling her to get her blessing.

Lois Baron, or “Auntie Pool” as I grew up calling her while swimming in her backyard, was many things: a scholar of English literature, a master of mahjong, a matriarch whose domain extended to countless nephews and nieces and neighbors. But for me, as with so many who held her dear, her most-defining characteristic was her passion for cooking. She was always cooking. Salmon patties, chopped liver, jambalaya, red pepper soup, the Thanksgiving gravy that she seemed to start cooking around Labor Day — you name it, her freezer was full of it.

Lois helped compile two separate cookbooks. First was the family recipe collection, painstakingly documented and reverse-engineered from often-reluctant sources. Her mother (my great-grandmother) Dorothy was a wonderful cook but notoriously secretive with her methods. When she did share a recipe, she would use unhelpfully vague measurements like “a glass of milk” or neglect to mention a key step in the process. It is a testament to Lois’ persistence and ingenuity that we still have at least a very close facsimile of Grandma Dorothy’s famous macaroni and cheese recipe.

The second was The Book of Schmaltz, an honest-to-god published cookbook by centered on rendered chicken skin infused with onions — what he called the “forgotten fat” at the heart of Ashkenazi cuisine. Lois served as Michael’s culinary muse for the book, which ended up full of our family’s recipes and stories. (He also wrote a beautiful tribute to her shortly after she passed.) It didn’t occur to me until recently how lucky we are to have Lois’ legacy immortalized in such a way.

Whenever I cook, I think about Lois. She, along with my Grandma Joanne (Lois’ sister, who died two years ago) and perhaps Bobby Flay, was my primary culinary influence. For as long as I can remember she had coached me in the kitchen, dating back to our childhood sleepovers that always featured some kind of interactive baking project.

I called Lois every time I did something interesting in the kitchen. She was both my toughest critic and my greatest champion. She’d pick up the phone and immediately ask, “What are you cooking?” Her voice would light up if she was confident in my plans; she wasn’t shy about her reservations if she wasn’t. Sometimes she was right to warn against my harebrained ideas, like my attempt to make homemade farfel. But she loved hearing when they worked. The day she asked me for my latke recipe was one of the proudest moments of my life.

She got something out of the arrangement, too. It wasn’t just that my calls from the kitchen were a means of connecting with a woman who had always treated me like a surrogate grandson. Lois cared very deeply about keeping the family traditions alive. What else could have compelled her to devote so much time to reverse-engineering the specific combination of midcentury dairy products that gave her mother’s macaroni and cheese its signature texture? Or to mentor a celebrity chef in the art of Ashkenazi depression cuisine? When I’d call while wrist-deep in chicken fat, she would sound not just excited but grateful: “You’re the only one who still makes this!”

The last time I saw Lois was Thanksgiving. We mostly do holidays with my wife’s family and plan our Cleveland trips for other times of year. The combination of death, estrangement, and geographical scattering has simply left us with fewer people in Ohio to celebrate with than we have on the east coast. But last fall we came in to help put on Thanksgiving for the alte kakers. We made Lois’ famous pies — pumpkin with Grand Marnier and her incomparable chocolate cream — under her direction. I fulfilled a lifelong dream by replacing the traditional turkey with a brisket, and Lois finally got to try the recipe I’d been telling her about for years. We flipped through the family cookbook and reminisced about our favorite recipes, and all the people we loved who had cooked and eaten them.

To me, the most amazing thing about Barcelona’s Sinagoga Major was the story of its rediscovery. It was unearthed and identified just 30 years ago, within my lifetime. Among the crucial clues proving that it was the ancient site of local worship is an inscription carved into the stone foundation of a wall facing towards Jerusalem: XIIX. That’s 18 — or chai, a symbolic number in Judaism — written in Roman numerals. The language is archaic, but the significance is as clear to us today as it was to its ancient scribe almost two millennia prior.

As I write this, there is proto-schmaltz simmering on the stove. I’ve lost track of how many times today I have sought guidance in the process from our treasured copy of The Book of Schmaltz, which contains some generation-spanning messages of its own. Michael was kind enough to dedicate the book to our family: “To Lois Waxman Baron and her forebears.”

The copy Lois bestowed upon my wife and me also has a special inscription, one that increasingly reads to me less like an encouragement than a decree:

To Lizzie + Lewie —

Who will lovingly carry on the family traditions.

Love,
Auntie Pool

And so I cook. I will proudly use homemade schmaltz in my matzoh ball soup, just as she would. I will chop the gribenes into my wicked eggs, just as she did with her egg salad. I think she would get a kick out of the rest of my planned menu, a tribute to some of her classic dishes with Seder-plate-themed twists. I bet she’d like my idea of lamb-on patties, a play on her popular salmon cakes. She wouldn’t pretend to be confident in my vision of matzoh-roni and cheese, but she would be excited either to hear that it worked or to get to say she told me so. That was part of our tradition too.

What makes the Passover holiday so special? It’s the connection of the ritual, with generations long past and the loved ones we remember. It sounds trite to describe the feeling in such a way. Leave it to Lois to inspire such schmaltz.

On its face, it’s a coup for the American left. Platner is rising in the polls while running as an unapologetic progressive — the kind I would normally be excited to vote for — in a purple-ish state. A guy who entered the race with virtually no name recognition is now favored against the sitting governor for his party’s nomination, and is leading (and running far ahead of his more-moderate primary opponent) against a fifth-term incumbent in the general. He is a one-man rebuke to the consultant-class consensus that tripling down on technocratic centrism at the expense of the grassroots left is the Democrats’ best hope for retaking power.

Yet Platner is also known for his ties to a different party. Video unearthed last fall revealed that he had a Totenkopf, an infamous Nazi insignia, tattooed on his chest. Platner claimed he was drunk when he got it in 2007 and did not know what it was. This may be literally true, but it is at least a conspicuous lie of omission. It strains credulity that someone with Platner’s interest in military iconography, to the point where he used to spend his time debating the significance of other allegedly fascist tattoos on Reddit, would not have recognized what was on his chest once he sobered up, let alone at any point in the 18 years following his Croatian bender. Platner’s own former campaign director gives no credence to his plea of ignorance — “He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff.” — and Platner’s old friend reported that the candidate had referred to his ink as “my Totenkopf.” Such dishonesty also preemptively undermines any suggestion that he has sincerely taken accountability for the supposed mistake. And even if you believe Platner’s story, it’s telling that his reaction to finding out was to start the PR damage control before he covered up the grotesque emblem, a strange Yglesiasesque reflex at odds with how any reasonable person would react to discovering an accidental connection to white supremacists.

Platner makes it very hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. In January he appeared on infamous antisemitic conspiracy-monger Nate Cornacchia’s podcast. Perhaps there’s something to be said for exposing Cornacchia’s audience to more-progressive views, but that doesn’t explain Platner describing himself as a “longtime fan.” A month later Platner retweeted Stew Peters, a white nationalist so notorious that the Southern Poverty Law Center maintains a warning page about him, crowing that their shared opposition to war with Iran “brings Republican and Democratic politicians together.” To say nothing of Platner’s own lengthy history of bigoted internet comments.

I can buy that Platner genuinely thinks these stories do not represent his true ideology. Maybe he’s an edgelord troll. Maybe it’s a campaign strategy: Platner’s habit of disavowing his own dog whistles could explain why he peels off so much support from Collins, who also loves expressing empty concerns about the bigots with whom she chooses to align. Maybe he’s simply too stupid or too coddled by yes men to realize how deeply offensive his actions are. Ultimately it isn’t irrelevant. History has a term for people who do not believe in white supremacy yet willfully associate themselves with Nazis. They are called “Nazis.”

Not long ago, such revelations would have been universally understood as disqualifying for public office. Even in the Republican Party — recall John McCain rejecting an endorsement from John Hagee, the pastor who claimed “God sent Hitler” to spur Jewish migration to the Middle East — and especially among Democrats and on the left. So how is Platner leading in the polls? Why is he being endorsed by Bernie Sanders, who as far as much of the country is concerned is the face of the American left? How did a man who sported a Totenkopf for 18 years successfully brand himself as a folksy progressive?

It starts with a familiar factor in modern politics: People are mad. Mills and Collins represent continuity for voters who want change. One is an unpopular governor, the other the personification of meek acquiescence to the loud drumbeat of fascism. The clearest throughline of the last decade or so of American politics is that frustrated voters will pick an unsavory outsider over a more-genteel establishment pol who sees the status quo as fundamentally sound. To return to one timely example, an easy way to prevent antiwar voters from gravitating towards someone who consorts with Stew Peters would be for the other leading candidates to offer more than mere milquetoast procedural objections to the incredibly unpopular conflict with Iran, instead of leaving Platner as the lone voice in the race speaking against the conflict on moral grounds.

But Platner’s rise is also an ominous, foreseeable consequence of a disturbing cultural movement: A preponderance of false allegations of antisemitism has desensitized our society to the legitimate hate our community faces.

The argument that Zionism and Judaism are one in the same, and therefore that criticism of the Israeli government is fundamentally antisemitic, is not new. Nor is it unanimous within our community. But it gained more salience after the attacks of October 7, 2023, as Israel claimed to act in our name in its retaliatory devastation of Gaza. Many of us condemned the destruction as against our Jewish values. Others hardened in their certitude of Israel’s righteousness. Leaders from both parties prefer to listen to the latter camp not because they are under the thumb of a Zionist cabal but because tokenizing us so aids their own ideological agendas. It is important to tread carefully here, as there is a fine line between acknowledging the complex and heterogenous significance of Zionism within the Jewish diaspora and sounding like what Platner listens to in the car.

One of the problems with using antisemitism to mean the belief that Palestinians are people is that invoking it ceases to carry weight. Most within our community seemed to agree that antisemitism played a role in the stories of peaceful Jewish protestors being arrested, assaulted, and evicted from their sukkot across college campuses. Yet perversely, many thought the label applied to the students who were targeted for their beliefs, not the officials and sometimes-violent counterprotestors who harassed them. The Anti-Defamation League was once a respected institution, advocating against bigotry and hatred towards not just Jews but other marginalized groups. The ADL’s pivot to Zionism as a first principle has so corrupted their purported mission that last year they declined to condemn Elon Musk’s Inauguration Day Nazi salutes out of deference to their ideological allies in the incoming Trump administration.

Is it any wonder that people are increasingly willing to shrug of a Totenkopf? This phenomenon was sadly entirely predictable. As I wrote last year:

I would never accuse these members of our community of not being truly Jewish based on how they interpret our professed ideals, a principle not all of them reciprocate towards those critical of Israel. But I would ask them, and any gentiles who believe in good faith that Zionism is the primary criterion of anti-antisemitism, to think through this Faustian bargain. At a time when anti-Jewish hatred is so prevalent — including among some pro-Palestinian activists, a nuance that gets obscured while debating the broad allegations against the movement at large — will it make us safer if gentiles are conditioned not to take allegations of antisemitism seriously?

It is one thing for us Jews to litigate such things amongst ourselves. It is grosser still when gentiles insist on defining antisemitism for us. And yet! Whether in an (increasingly poorly calibrated) attempt to win votes, as a vehicle for making Islamophobia sound more politically correct, or in service of hastening a prophesied armageddon, Christian politicians on both sides of the aisle have the chutzpah to lecture us about Judaism when it suits their interests. From Donald Trump’s thinly veiled pretext for authoritarian crackdowns to Joe Biden’s decades-old lust for war in the Middle East to Ritchie Torres insisting that those opposed to the carnage in Gaza are not really Jewish, these goys who cry wolf are teaching Americans to roll their eyes at accusations of antisemitism. Again, this was eminently foreseeable. As I wrote two years ago:

I dread a world where gentiles grow up believing Biden’s representation of our people’s values. I wonder whether the President intends his strange, repeated insistence that Jewish Americans’ safety depends on Israel as a dog-whistle of othering, or whether he truly does not see protecting us as within his purview. And I am concerned for a future where gentiles do not take antisemitism seriously, if repeatedly invoking the term in the name of Zionism desensitizes our culture to actual discrimination against Jewish people.

What’s more, Platner is hardly the first high-profile Democrat to dabble in Nazi ideology in recent years, and most such transgressions have come not from the left but the center. (I emphasize the Democrats here not because the Republican Party is free of such sins, but because white nationalism no longer counts as a scandal in today’s GOP.) Joe Biden undercounted the death toll of the Shoah by over three full orders of magnitude when he called the attacks of October 7 “as consequential as the Holocaust.” His advisor Michael McFaul bafflingly remained a cable-news guest in good standing after insisting on The Rachel Maddow Show that “Hitler didn’t kill ethnic Germans.” Three years ago, liberal pundits scrambled to distance themselves from conservative writer Richard Hanania after his white-supremacist pseudonymous writing came to light; now Gavin Newsom, the governor of the largest state in the country and favorite for the 2028 nomination, is retweeting him. Perhaps most grotesquely of all, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the two highest-ranking Democratic legislators in the country, co-headlined a pro-Israel rally with John Hagee — the same “God sent Hitler” pastor whom John McCain was shamed into disavowing within my lifetime.

Here two wrongs certainly do not make a right. There is no virtue in condoning a progressive’s dalliances with white supremacy just because moderate Democrats received no pushback for theirs. But the inverse is also true. If you look the other way at centrists’ Nazi apologia, how can you have any credibility in condemning Platner?

Last year’s New York City mayoral election served as an interesting test case of these phenomena, for better and worse. It’s clearly a positive for both the city and broader society that voters saw through the bad-faith efforts to smear Zohran Mamdani as antisemitic. But these disingenuous allegations crowded out a more-important discussion about his opponent’s actual bigotry. How did Andrew Cuomo, who was once known as hostile to the Jewish community and referred to us as “these people and their fucking tree houses,” position himself as the anti-antisemitic candidate? And baseless as the attacks against Mamdani were, what happens when voters learn that accusations of antisemitism can be ignored? Graham Platner can’t wait to find out.

There’s a fine line between understanding and rationalizing. It should (though evidently does not) go without saying that disingenuousness from Zionist leaders and hypocrisy from other parts of the political spectrum is not a good reason to condone what even a Platner defender must concede is at least a conspicuous proximity to bigotry. Leftist political commentators who have been gassing him up, like Naomi Klein and the staff of Jacobin, certainly know better. These broader issues are absolutely not exculpatory for Bernie Sanders, whose bewildering dismissals of the significance of the Totenkopf and stubborn loyalty to a man who by historical standards would be uncontroversially labeled a Nazi ought to be considered legacy-redefining betrayals of the movement he inspired.

I’m fortunate to be mostly surrounded by people who understand that an SS symbol is a dealbreaker. I’ve heard only one person I know defend Platner: “His in-laws are Jews,” they told me after the tattoo scandal broke. Of course having Jewish family by marriage means you can’t possibly be antisemitic, which is why Donald Trump famously never associates with Nazis. (I wonder how Platner’s in-laws feel about Stew Peters.) Yet looking at Maine polls, my experience is plainly not universal. And without remotely condoning this choice, when a cynical electorate is trained to assume that allegations of antisemitism are cast in bad faith, it isn’t surprising that voters brush them off.

Some of Platner’s detractors argue that he could be a second John Fetterman, another outsider with a racist past who campaigned as a populist progressive yet now votes as the most-conservative Democrat in the Senate. I think this critique misses the point. My biggest fears about Platner’s likely election are that we as a society decide that being chest-deep in white nationalism is not disqualifying for public office; and that when our current political moment ends and the next generation of leaders reckons with how to move forward, the party that is ostensibly opposed to such bigotry will prefer settling for something less than the banishment of Nazism from polite society to reckoning with the junior senator from the Pine Tree State.

I resent the notion that the left should be held accountable for disavowing Platner, just as it should not be my responsibility as a non-Zionist Jewish American to clarify that I do not support Israel’s genocide. But I feel an obligation to push back when such bad actors claim to represent me. I will not participate in the normalization of white supremacy, nor the continued trivialization of the hate my community faces. Whatever their ideology or religion, it’s a shanda that so many civic leaders are unwilling to say the same.

UPDATE: A few minutes after publication, a Platner staffer emailed with an unsolicited statement in response to this essay.

I consider The Lewsletter to be a personal blog, not a news outlet, As such I do not typically seek or publish such comments from public figures, as I would (and have) in more-journalistic endeavors.

In this case, I believe it is illuminating to read what a defense of Platner looks like. I also think it is revealing about how the campaign views the issues I raised. Therefore I felt it was prudent to share the statement verbatim and in full.

The following is a quote from Platner campaign official Daniel Moraff:

Appreciate the shout out. [Note: The original post alluded to the reported story of how Platner was recruited to run, in which Moraff played a role, but did not mention him or any campaign staff by name.]

Unfortunately, while this is well-intentioned, you’re part of the same problem. You have a leader who is increasingly beloved and is not an anti-semite and you’re calling him one. He isn’t one, you have no evidence that he is aside from a trip to a Croatian tattoo parlor with his unit (all anti-semites?) 18 years ago, for a symbol that I sure as shit wouldn’t have recognized (and that the vast majority of Jews who see it don’t recognize). I think you’re fully aware Platner has not “dabble[d] in Nazi ideology” or there would have been a cite other than a quote tweet of a C-Span video tweeted by a wrong guy -- obviously a campaign fuckup (do you think Graham Platner is picking out his own quote tweets??), albeit an unfortunate one.

And in eight months, when he defeats Susan Collins, becomes even more of a national hero, and continues to not be an anti-Semite, the accusations that he is will continue to cheapen the word itself.

I will leave the reader to draw their own conclusions about how satisfyingly this addresses and assuages the concerns raised about Platner’s bigotry; what to make of the (perhaps related) implication that Platner entrusts his social media account to a staffer who follows a white supremacist; and why a senatorial campaign was so rankled by the words of an inconsequential blogger that an aide would feel compelled to offer an on-the-record response like this. (You would think a campaign that has been so focused on tattoos would have thicker skin.)

Moraff did not respond to a subsequent request for comment about how Platner’s family, whose heritage the candidate has invoked to dismiss the significance of his tattoo, feels about the campaign’s associations with Stew Peters and Nate Cornacchia.

But something funny started happening: People found our travel guides useful. It turns out that, when friends ask us advice about cities we’ve visited, it’s handy to have our recommendations already organized in one place. I get a kick out of it every time someone we know finds their way to Spitalfields in Dublin or O Cachalote in Terceira.

When I told one friend last month that we were on our way to Barcelona, his first response was that he was thinking about going there soon too, and was already looking forward to my reviews. So I guess I have a reputation to uphold.

What follows is a curated but thorough list of our favorite things we did, saw, ate, and drank over a week in Barcelona in January 2026 — the specific type of travel guide I would have wanted to read before our vacation. If you’re considering your own trip to Catalonia, I hope you find it useful. Please have a slice of jamón in our honor.

Basics and Logistics

Barcelona is an amazing city. The history. The culture. The food — my goodness, the food. You could make a great vacation out of stuffing your days with museums and tours, or by simply walking around and taking in the architecture between frequent stops for charcuterie and vermouth. As an American, it feels different enough that you know you’re far from home (unlike, say, Dublin) but it’s easy enough to get around speaking English that an inexperienced traveler needn’t be intimidated. In short, it is the platonic ideal of an international destination.

Our itinerary

We spent a full week in Barcelona, Saturday to Saturday. That was a departure from our usual attempts to stuff as many experiences as we can into our bigger trips — I’d never planned a vacation for such a length in a single place. We didn’t necessarily need that much time, and I think we could have split the week up with another destination and still felt like we had done the city justice. (To the extent that you can ever say such a thing after visiting as a tourist.) Yet Barcelona is a marvelous city in which to simply be. To admire the architecture, to pop into a historical site or a beautiful church, to stop for a glass of cava. It was nice to have time to slow down.

Here’s a high-level overview of how we divided up our days:

• Day 1: walking around Ciutat Vella (while fighting off post-redeye exhaustion)

• Day 2: Sagrada Família (after sleeping off the jet lag)

• Day 3: walking to, around, and back from Park Güell

• Day 4: museums in Ciutat Vella

• Day 5: museums on Montjuïc

• Day 6: day trip to Sitges and Olèrdola

• Day 7: crossing off our remaining to-do-list items

We went at what may be the nadir time for tourism: the middle of January, right after the end of the Spanish holiday season (Epiphany). This meant the weather was chilly (in the fifties on the Fahrenheit scale) and many sites we had on our list were closed for the season or had limited hours. The flipside is that, with the exception of Sagrada Família, we didn’t have to contend with any crowds. I can’t speak to how the vibes change in the summer, but we were happy to put on a jacket if it meant we had entire museum wings to ourselves.

Traveling to and around Barcelona

It’s not quite as easy to get from the United States to Barcelona as it is to Reykjavík or Dublin, but flight options were at least as numerous and cheap as for any European destination that hasn’t explicitly positioned itself as a layover hub for transatlantic travel. Understanding that border experiences can be tricky these days, immigration was easy and efficient once they opened for the morning (we were too far back to see whether customs really were not staffed until 9:00 am or if that was just the rumor in line, but the pace indeed went from stagnant to quick right around then) and including a leisurely stroll through the duty-free store we made it through passport control and to our gate within an hour of arriving at the airport to fly home.

Walking is our preferred mode of transportation on vacation, and Barcelona was a great place for that. The streets are well paved and (at least throughout the Eixample area) plotted out in a neat grid — neither of which I take for granted in old European cities. There are some hills and elevation changes but the terrain is far easier than, say, Lisbon. And as in Stockholm, traveling on foot also meant every excursion doubled as an architecture tour, because there’s an eye-catching façade or roofscape around every corner in this remarkable city.

Our limited experience with public transit was nice enough. We hopped on a very convenient bus from the airport to Plaça de Catalunya when we arrived, and we took the commuter rail for a day trip to Sitges. We had so much fun walking around the city that we never ended up taking the metro. Within Barcelona proper it seemed easy to grab a cab or ride-share (though you may think twice about using the latter).

Where we stayed

We got a very good (and seemingly uncharacteristically low) rate at the H10 Cubik. The place was swanky, clean, and comfortable, and the staff were incredibly kind and helpful. We had a couple seemingly fluky issues but if we got another deal I would happily stay there again.

The best part was the location, on the border of the new and old city zones. We were right on the main thoroughfare of Via Laietana and a stone’s throw from the transit hub of Plaça de Catalunya. For our fellow pedestrians, it was a 10-15 minute walk to the heart of the Gothic Quarter (where we found ourselves gravitating to just about every day) and within an hour of our farthest destinations within the city (Park Güell and Montjuïc).

On pickpocketing

When you tell someone you’re going to Barcelona, their first response may be a warning. Barcelona is known as the pickpocketing capital of Europe, and you’ll hear it described as a city-wide thunderdome of petty theft. Having lived most of my life in places decried as unsafe by people who don’t go there, I’ve learned to roll my eyes at such rhetoric. There are also theories that certain locals play up the pickpocketing problem as a means to stoke xenophobia, advocate for harsher criminal penalties, or scare away tourists. On the other hand, we heard these warnings even from level-headed friends who enjoy and have lived in major cities.

All I can say is that the Barcelona we experienced did not match the horror stories. We took precautions with what we kept on our person and carried our valuables in secure zippered and/or inner pockets, and I can imagine La Rambla and Plaça del Rei are far more crowded and chaotic in the summer than they were in mid-January. Acknowledging those caveats, we walked all over Barcelona at various hours and levels of alertness and felt just as safe (if not more so) as in any other large city I’ve been to. Neither locals nor tourists exhibited the guardedness we were told was de rigueur. It was probably smart that we avoided having our out phones on the street, but if we hadn’t heard otherwise beforehand, nothing about the vibe when we were actually in Barcelona would have made me feel like such caution were necessary.

Communicating

Barcelona ranks up there with Brussels among the most-multilingual cities I have ever visited. The prevalence of both Catalan and Spanish, to say nothing of the steady stream of visitors in one of the most-popular international destinations in the world, means people are accustomed to the dance of finding a common tongue. Within the city, virtually everyone we interacted with spoke fluent English; even some restaurants where we were clearly the only tourists had translated menus.

Some familiarity with a Romance language was helpful for getting around, but as in elsewhere in Iberia, we frequently found it was easier for everyone if we simply spoke English rather than fumbling through our limited vocabulary in the local tongue. Having said that, if you want to brush up on your Catalan before you go, we highly recommend The Lazy Linguist podcast. After a week of listening, my wife had learned enough to be confident in her sidequest to find skincare bargains. Locals also seemed to appreciate us tourists attempting to speak Catalan rather than Spanish.

Note that English is less ubiquitous outside Barcelona proper, so plan accordingly if you are going on any broader excursions. Otherwise, when you finish up your day at a remote archeological site with spotty cell service and realize that you are outside the closest taxi company’s driving range, you may discover that the kind receptionist at the visitor’s center cannot understand your description of your plight. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

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Do and See

Part of what we loved about Barcelona was how easy it is to have a good time without a structured itinerary. Nonetheless, there are some incredibly cool destinations within the city that are worth planning a visit. If nothing else they’ll give you something to do until you’re hungry for another round of tapas.

Art

Park Güell

How does one begin to explain Park Güell? Describing Gaudí’s modernist fantasyland as an open-air art exhibition sounds too stodgy for a place where locals bring their kids to the playground. Calling it a garden park drastically undersells the scale and beauty of the buildings and horticulture. Whatever it is, the functional architecture and landscaping of Park Güell are alternately serene, surprising, and stunning. It’s as close as you can get to walking through a Dr. Seuss book, and well worth a leisurely stroll to take it all in.

Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya

Now this is an art museum. The enormous halls of the Palau Nacional teem with works representing myriad eras, styles, and media. Displays range from Romanesque frescoes preserved in modular cathedrals to Gaudí-designed furniture to a particularly moving exhibit of art from and about the Spanish Civil War. One collection opens with a note that there is no possible way to group the paintings therein in a cohesive way, so they simply did the best they could.

Do be prepared for just how big this museum is. If you don’t have truly all day to spend there, you may need to either powerwalk through the exhibits or limit your visit to one or two wings.

Museu Picasso

There are several Picasso museums around Europe, a fact of which you are constantly aware when you’re strolling the galleries in Barcelona. Partly because of the staff doth protest so much that unlike the others, and especially the one in Paris, this was the only museum Pablo Picasso himself was involved in establishing. And partly because it feels like the works on display were selected via draft rather than deliberate curation.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great museum. It makes sense that the Barcelona collection would be disproportionately focused on his youth in Spain. As relative art history amateurs, the tour taught us a lot about Picasso as a precocious yet more-traditional child painter, and as a bohemian adolescent growing bored with Europe’s predominant stodgy artistic taste. For an artist as prolific as Picasso, even an abridged revue of his later work is plenty to fill a gallery. But it felt like the museum equivalent of a biopic, more a series of vignettes about Picasso than the story of his life and career.

Moco Museum

There’s a fuzzy line between avant-garde and grift. Walking through Moco’s collections in the gorgeous halls of Palau Cervelló makes you constantly aware of this ambiguity. When the curators placed more-recent, less-digestible riffs on cultural iconography next to Andy Warhol’s, were they endorsing these new artists as the heirs to his legacy? Or was hanging less-interesting cartoonish pop art down the hall from the marvelous Keith Haring collection a gambit to make you question your plebeian taste if it leaves you unimpressed?

I’m not the arbiter of what counts as art, and I suspect provoking such questions is one of their goals. Maybe it doesn’t matter — when you’re immersed in the joyful lightshow of the Diamond Matrix, you won’t care whether or not it was designed as Instagram fodder. Yet I found myself genuinely frustrated by Moco’s display of NFTs, a pointless and ecologically destructive medium whose Ponzi-scheme market went belly-up not long after their exhibition opened. I tried to keep an open mind about a generative-AI display that purportedly makes digital art from your pulse, but it turns out you have to both subscribe to their mailing list and pay €35 if you want to see your personalized colorings. It’s an incisive metaphor for the AI industry, though I don’t think that was the intention. A month later I’m still scratching my head over a curation approach that celebrates both Banksy’s anonymous anti-consumerism and such a cynically invasive cash-grab.

Cathedrals

Sagrada Família

This is the free space on your Barcelona itinerary bingo card. The Sagrada Família may still be unfinished, but is already the tallest church on earth and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You simply must visit the grandest construction zone on the planet.

The ornate sculptures built into the façades. The bright hues of the technicolor stained glass. The transfixing geometry of the columns, their branches twisting into the ceiling like a forest canopy. I have no particular affinity for either architecture or Catholicism, yet the sense of awe I felt when I walked in made me understand why nonbelievers convert. Once you pick your jaw off the floor, you can go up a tower for great views of the city and to see some of the elevated decor up close, and down to the basement to learn more about the church’s construction and the philosophies of Antoni Gaudí. We went on our first full day in Barcelona, and while the latter helped us appreciate the hallmarks of Gaudí’s designs for the rest of our trip, the flipside was that every other beautiful church we visited subsequently felt anticlimactic.

Barcelona Cathedral

It isn’t fair that Barcelona Cathedral is an also-ran. Just about anywhere else, it would be the most-iconic church in the city. It’s a beautiful cathedral where you can feel the history, from the centuries-old paintings in the ornate choir stalls to the Roman-era foundations on a site where followers have worshipped since the early days of Christianity. It was also our favorite rooftop we went up to, offering stunning views of the old city. Visit the modern church before you go to the history museum (below) so you can fully appreciate the ancient ruins underneath.

…and other churches

One of the joys of walking around a European city is how easy it is to stumble upon a gorgeous church. For the price of a couple euros (or sometimes nothing at all) you can see some beautiful art and learn a little about the history of the communities who worship there. Santa Maria del Mar and Basilica of Our Lady of Mercy were our favorite such stops that we had not specifically flagged as destinations.

History and Archeology

Museu d'Història de Barcelona, Plaça del Rei

There’s a whole lot under one roof at MUHBA’s flagship campus, including extensive exhibits on Catalonia’s medieval and modern histories. (Or really three roofs, as the Palau Reial Major complex spans a cluster of grand buildings dating back 700 years.) The modern-curated collections are well worth a visit. But the real treasures are underground. An elevator outfitted as a time machine takes you down to the remarkably preserved Roman ruins of ancient Barcino. Houses, storefronts, and facilities for making wine and garum are still clearly identifiable nearly two millennia later. The extensive basement tour also takes you beneath Barcelona Cathedral, where the remnants of older churches form the foundation of the modern structure above.

Your ticket includes admission to come back another day, which was helpful since the couple hours we had budgeted for our first visit weren’t nearly enough to take in all the ancient splendor.

…and MUHBA’s other sites

There are many smaller museums operating under MUHBA’s auspices. These are much shorter yet still worthwhile visits, and each one we went to — including the well-preserved remnants of the Temple of Augustus and Via Sepulcral Romana, the medieval ruins below the markets of El Born and Santa Caterina, and the gallery of local Jewish history at El Call — was either free or inexpensive to get in.

Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya, Barcelona

One of my favorite museum displays I have ever walked through is tucked away towards the back of MAC. The exhibit on the early culture and Roman conquest of the Balearic Islands provided an engaging and detailed overview of a slice of history I knew nothing about, complemented by an impressively curated collection of contemporary artifacts. If only the whole building were like that room.

MAC’s extensive collections are broadly divided into two sections: one on Catalonia before Roman Barcino, from prehistory through the Phoenicians and Greeks; and one about the Roman Empire. The former was fascinating, though it was hard to fully appreciate as (except for the Balearic area) most of the displays lacked English translations. I’m not complaining that a foreign country did not fully cater to my linguistic limitations, though being able to read only a brief brochure at the start of each room was not the norm at most museums, and I wish the exception had not coincidentally been the place where I was most excited to learn about the objects in front of us. By contrast, the multimedia (and multilingual) IMPERIVM exhibit, which explored an impressive array of Roman artifacts through the imagined biographies of fictional actor-portrayed composite characters, was much more accessible, though we were not the target audience for this presentation style. In short, it’s a cool museum, but one whose collections are frustratingly hard to fully appreciate.

Sinagoga Major

Tucked away in an alley near the official MUHBA El Call museum is Sinagoga Major, which I found to be a more-moving monument to local Jewish history. It’s a tiny museum housed on a site where Jewish people have been praying for nearly two millennia, dating back to Roman Barcino. Even as a fairly secular Jew, I felt something standing in such a place and learning the story of how it was rediscovered.

MAC Olèrdola

Forty kilometers outside the city lies one of the coolest archeological sites I’ve ever seen. With a history dating back to Bronze Age, Olèrdola’s structures (in varying states of ruin, with some impressively intact) represent three different eras of settlement: medieval, Roman, and pre-Iberian. You can walk among the ancient streets, step inside a millennium-old church, and climb up to the Roman watchtower from whence guards kept an eye on Via Augusta. And if you can tear your gaze away from the historic architecture, the serenity and beauty of the verdant rolling hills will make it apparent why so many peoples chose to call this place home. It’s not a place you’ll find in most tourist guides — every local we talked to seemed surprised that we knew about it, and for most of our time there we had the site to ourselves — which made it feel all the more magical to be there.

One note of caution: Secure your transportation in advance. It was easy enough to get from Barcelona to Olèrdola by taking the commuter rail to the beach town of Sitges and grabbing a cab from there. But finding a driver willing to pick you up from Olèrdola may be challenging in a remote area with poor cell service and a lower proportion of English speakers. Taxi Vilafranca eventually game to our rescue, though in retrospect I would have simply rented a car for the day.

Eat and Drink

Barcelona is one of the best food cities I’ve ever been to, period. Partly because the bar is so high: we swooned over nearly every single thing we ate. Partly because the tapes culture (Catalan for “tapas”) makes it easy to taste a lot of different dishes, or even to build your own progressive meal with a single course at each restaurant. And since we walked an average of 10 miles a day, we worked up enough of an appetite to stop for a snack with great frequency.

If you’re like me, the first thing that comes to mind with Spanish food is ham. I’m typically not huge on pork, but jamón ibérico truly is worth the hype. (Really all pig products are better over there. It took me until frustratingly late in our trip to realize that bacon was not a boring thing to order.) You’ll probably want pa amb tomaquet (tomato toast) with your jamón, and why not some manchego cheese? An incomplete list of foods you’ll see a lot of includes: botifarra and other sausages, bombas (potato-and-meat balls), patatas bravas, croquettes, cannelloni, xurros, and of course paella.

At some point in your travels you may also get thirsty. Espresso is part of the rhythm of life in Barcelona, and is brewed with a first principle of taste rather than an instant caffeine boost. On the adult-beverage front, Catalonia is mostly known for various forms of wine: cava, sangria, vermouth. We also found some excellent cocktails and good spots for both local and international craft beer.

Must-try

Come hungry and plan your trip around going to…

Tapeo

It was our penultimate night in Barcelona and we had a lot of restaurants left that we wanted to try. Our plan was to do a tapas crawl, wandering around El Born and splitting a small plate or two at a time. Then we got to Tapeo and we canceled the rest of our stops. And also came back for lunch the next day.

To start with, the vermut was the best we had in Spain: Lustau brand, served over ice with green olives and orange rind, a pour that tastes like a cocktail. The broad and creative menu is inspired by (but not beholden to) regional traditions, including braised leeks, asparagus tempura, lamb pintxo, and pork marinated in the Catalonian equivalent of Caribbean mojo. The highlight was the sausage cannelloni, an indulgent dish that I can best describe as if you crossed ravioli with biscuits and gravy. Tapeo was far and away our favorite restaurant in Barcelona, and one of the best I’ve been to in recent memory anywhere.

Bar Brutal

When we solicited advice from friends before our trip, Bar Brutal was far and away the most-popular recommendation we heard. We are excited to pay that forward. The ham there was second to none: a translucently sliced lomo ibérico that sure didn’t taste lean, and raw pancetta so indulgent that it almost felt shameful to eat. The cooked dishes we had — grilled mushrooms with celeriac cream and broccolini with peanut curry — were also inspired. And while the specialty behind the bar is wine, the Al Carajo with coffee-infused brandy and orange was simply one of the tastiest cocktails I’ve ever had. When I close my eyes and picture myself relaxing in Barcelona, my mind goes to Bar Brutal.

Strongly Recommended

If you can get there, you’ll be glad you made time for…

Bar Joan

I’m a sucker for a market. (Thanks, Grandma Joanne.) When you’re sitting at the counter at Bar Joan, you’re not just in Mercat de Santa Caterina, you feel like you’re part of it. They must get enough tourists to have translated menus, but both times we went (we liked our first breakfast so much that we returned for our last meal before we flew home) we were the only customers who didn’t seem to personally know the staff.

The food is cheap and fast: coffee and a solid breakfast’s worth of small plates will run you only about €10 a person, and if you’re in a rush you could be comfortably in and out in 20 minutes. (It’s also a place where you can linger, as we saw folks drinking wine carafes at mid-morning.) More importantly, it’s good. Savory saucer-sized omelettes, creamy croquettes, hearty sandwiches. All made with ingredients from the adjoining stalls. Eat there for a delicious peek into the real Barcelona.

Cal Pep

There is no menu at Cal Pep. Well technically there is — there’s one posted on the wall at the front, and you can go look at it if you must. But when you pull up a stool at the cozy counter, as we did on our first night in Spain, your server informs you that it isn’t important. They’ll describe what they’re featuring that evening (even grabbing what’s freshest out of the cooler to show you), and it doesn’t matter whether that’s what’s written down.

The fried artichoke was the first dish that caught our ears. The leaves were crispy, light, and tossed in an addictive flaky salt. The main event, though, was the steak. Our server helped us pick the best-looking hunk of meat of the cooler before it was cooked right in front of us to a textbook medium-rare. It was the best steak I’ve had in a long time, and it looked so good that the couple next to us ordered the exact same thing.

3 Focs

According to the prevailing wisdom, the only way to experience a real calçotada — a Catalonian custom of burning, peeling, and eating a local allium cultivar — is to go out into the countryside where the onions are harvested. But if you must try calçots in Barcelona proper, the place to go is 3 Focs. We were lucky enough to be there right at the start of the season: “Comença la temporada de calçotades,” they posted a couple hours before we stopped in for dinner.

The croquettes at 3 Focs (we tried both chicken and ham) were the best we had in Spain, and the ham-topped grilled mushrooms were also quite good. Still, the calçots, which look like big scallions or small leeks and taste like pearl onions, were the star. It’s a whole experience to unsheathe the steamed inner stalk from the ashen outer layer, but it’s worth the prep work when you take a bite of smoky allium smothered in the addictive romesco dipping sauce.

Recommended

Don’t go too far out of your way, but we can vouch for these places if you’re in the mood for…

Other great tapes spots

When I say the bar for food in Barcelona is high, what I mean is: Cañete and El Chigre 1769 would each be the second-best restaurant we’ve been to over two trips to Ireland. But I have to draw the line somewhere lest my superlatives lose their meaning. We had a nice lunch at Cañete, featuring particularly good jamón and comforting escudella soup, though it was one of the priciest restaurants we went to and it had touristy vibes. Meanwhile, everything we had at our snack stop at El Chigre 1769 was great — flavored vermut, xarcuterie, and a surprise taste test of a new chorizo-stuffed dates dish the chef was trying out — but we can’t endorse it quite as strongly without having sampled more of the menu.

Paella

There’s a common joke that tourists in Barcelona are worried about the wrong kind of robbery. The real crime wave in the city isn’t pickpocketing — it’s selling travelers mediocre paella at exorbitant markups. With that in mind, maybe locals would snicker about my recommending a paelleria where the family at the next table ordered hamburgers. Nonetheless, we had a great meal at De Tapa Madre. The meaty arròs de muntanya was delicious, as were the spicy patatas bravas with chorizo and cheese.

Food markets

La Boqueria is touristy. A common criticism on travel forums is that, in a city teeming with great markets, La Boqueria doesn’t feel like a place where locals do their shopping. Yet as someone who otherwise tries to avoid tourist traps, I don’t understand this complaint. Are you hoping to buy groceries while you’re on vacation? It’s a great spot to grab a snack and peruse the gorgeous arrays of meats and cheeses, and unless you’re staying in a home with a kitchen that’s what matters most.

If you want an more-authentic local experience, there seemed to be a nice market every couple blocks. We spent the most time at Santa Caterina, mostly because Bar Joan (above) is inside.

Coffee

The best coffee we had in Barcelona was at La Cassola, a quaint café in the Gothic Quarter. At about €3 for a great cappuccino and a really good snack-sized sandwich, it was also the best bargain of our trip.

You can get a good espresso at seemingly every food establishment in town, including ubiquitous local chain 365 and the cafés at the Picasso and National Art museums. For more modern-barista-style brews, we can also recommend Nomad and Pipol.

Desserts

Spain is storied for its chocolate, and we sampled on our trip lived up to the hype. Our favorite came from Be Chocolat, which sells both excellent confections and dreamy high-strength drinking chocolate. Chocolate Amatller was also quite good and strongly encourages free samples.

If you don’t get gelato, did you even go to Europe? We had delicious nightcaps at Oggi and delaCrem, though our favorite scoop was from Elisa, a ringer franchise from Rome. Speaking of which…

Italian food

It feels kind of silly to go to an Italian restaurant in Spain. But Catalonia is much closer to Italy than Rhode Island is, and a couple times on our trip we found ourselves craving a bowl of pasta. The two we went to couldn’t have been more different. BelleBuòn serves classic regional dishes, and every other table in the completely full restaurant seemed to be speaking Spanish or Catalan. Benzina is geared more towards the Instagram demographic, and its modern fusion fare would fit perfectly in some hip Boston neighborhood, both stylistically and linguistically. Both were delicious.

Non-wine drinks

Dry Martini may not feel like an authentic Barcelona experience. But when you’re sitting in a speakeasy sipping their smooth eponymous martini, or a chocolatey absinthe potion served smoking in a glass pipe, you won’t be bothered by such concerns. Same goes for La Whiskeria, a cozy saloon featuring the largest selection of whiskey I’ve ever seen.

If beer is more your speed, BierCab boasts an impressive tap list of both local and international brews and also serves good snacks. We can also recommend the Belgian selection at Lambicus, a serene plaza beer at La Rovira, and the generously poured flights at CocoVail, a sports bar that also functions as a cultural U.S. consulate.

Snacks in Sitges

Our brief time in Sitges was not the culinary highlight of our trip, which is probably to be expected when you go to a beach town on a weekday in the middle of winter. We had nice coffee at Gallo, good xurros and chocolate at La Xurreria, and a grand seaside sangria at Gaby’s.

More-adventurous eats

By now you may have noticed some types of food I have not mentioned. I am allergic to shellfish, I don’t like most other seafood, and I am turned off by offal. (Judge me if you must, but at least the former isn’t my fault.) This took a fair amount of Catalan cuisine off the table for me. In particular there were three particular local-oriented meals that I wished I could have enjoyed more fully: the bustling lunch rush at La Cova Fumada, the deli-counter experience at Quimet & Quimet, and snacks and drinks at Vermuteria Puigmartí. I bet (and have heard) each is great if you look at more of the menu than I did.

tl;dr:

• Best famous attractions: MUHBA Plaça del Rei, Park Güell, Sagrada Família

• Best lesser-known attractions: MAC Olèrdola, Sinagoga Major

• Best views: Park Güell, Barcelona Cathedral

• Best food: Tapeo

• Best budget bites: Bar Joan, La Cassola

• Best ham: Bar Brutal, Cañete

• Best dessert: Elisa, Be Chocolat

• Best coffee: La Cassola, Nomad

• Best beer: BierCab, Lambicus

• Best vermut: Tapeo, El Chigre 1769

• Best cocktails: Bar Brutal, Dry Martini

You can also see everywhere we went and ate on this annotated Google Map!

There is plenty to say about the new inductees’ incredible careers, but I have written about them both before, and I am not particularly interested in venerating Jones any further. But there are other subtler trends among the voting results that are illuminating for interested fans. Here are my five biggest takeaways about the Cooperstown selection process as we start looking ahead to 2027 and beyond.

Content warning: domestic and sexual violence

A new tolerance for cheaters…

The modern electorate’s approach to cheating could charitably be described as idiosyncratic. Mike Piazza is in the Hall of Fame despite having admitted to using androstenedione, and several other recent inductees are commonly suspected or assumed to have used performance-enhancing drugs as well. Other players have been less lucky, as their doping became the defining feature of their respective candidacies. Like Rafael Palmeiro, a member of both the 3,000-hit and 500-homer clubs who failed to maintain the requisite five-percent support to even remain on the BBWAA ballot. Or Mark McGwire, who never reached even a quarter of the vote despite the fact that the commissioner had contemporaneously condoned his drug use.

To me, Carlos Beltrán’s involvement in the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scheme was more objectionable than his peers using PEDs: The connection between the cheating and the outcome on the field is clearer, and there has never been any ambiguity that using technology to steal signs is illegal. (Though I would have voted for him regardless.) Clearly the electorate disagrees, since Beltrán is getting his flowers while Alex Rodríguez has barely half the support (40 percent) required for enshrinement.

Still, I wonder if Beltrán’s induction will spark a reconsideration. If the sole player explicitly named as responsible after the commissioner’s office’s monthslong investigation into the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal can receive the game’s highest honor, what about the raft of other recent stars who allegedly cheated but were never found to have violated MLB’s collectively bargained drug policy? Many voters today make a distinction between those who juiced before the league had a real testing and enforcement program and those who violated it, and since Beltrán was not suspended for cheating he is nominally more comparable to the former group. But the scandal cost him his job as manager of the New York Mets before he had coached a single game, which was widely understood as a de facto punishment.

One of the strongest arguments for letting dopers into the Hall is that the typical recourse for PEDs is not a lifetime ban. Palmeiro and Rodríguez, for example, each played the Majors again after they served their time. Even sure-to-be controversial upcoming candidate Robinson Canó, who missed a combined 242 games after testing positive for banned substances on two separate occasions, later returned to the big leagues in good standing. By contrast, Beltrán has not coached an MLB game since he lost his nascent managerial job,1 so I’d argue that he is effectively closer to being on the league’s permanently ineligible list than any recent candidate who’s been kept out due to drugs.

I’m not holding my breath. If the BBWAA’s views on inducting (alleged) cheaters into Cooperstown were consistent, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. But if the writers were looking for an off-ramp from their incoherent approach to PEDs, Beltrán’s election provides a potential reset button. At the very least, it clarifies that the voters’ stridence is specifically about juicing, not other forms of cheating, so perhaps we won’t see similar efforts to retroactively punish other recent contemporaneously abided yet ethically questionable behavior like pitch framing and grip enhancements.

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And speaking of inferring moral judgments…

…and abusers.

On December 25, 2012, the police were called to Andruw Jones’ house. His wife told police that Jones had dragged her down a flight of stairs and threatened to kill her. He was arrested for battery and later pled guilty to the charges; there is no need here to say “allegedly.” Today the man who committed these heinous acts was granted the highest honor the game can bestow.

Our society and the sport purport to take intimate-partner violence seriously. I suspect that virtually every individual BBWAA voter — even the ones who voted for Jones, or Omar Vizquel, or Manny Ramírez, or Francisco Rodríguez — would tell you that they do, too. They might say that recognizing Jones’ achievements and condemning his personal conduct are not mutually exclusive, even as such veneration of an athlete’s performance inevitably bleeds over into adulting their character. I used to hold that view, so I get it. But the more I think about the pain that doing so causes to survivors of IPV, and that selective tolerance for such acts gives other abusers hope that their crimes will be similar swept under the rug, the harder it is for me to understand voters’ eagerness to separate the player from the man. Grosser still is the philosophy, implicit among the dozens of voters who stopped supporting Vizquel after the disturbing allegations against him arose yet continued to check Jones’ name (and even explicit among some writers who in their ballot explainers), that such issues are irrelevant if a player is good enough — if they have enough home runs or Gold Gloves, their other sins are washed away.

Hall of Fame elections aren’t political campaigns, and there is no consideration towards choosing a lesser evil for the greater good. Is making our already-flawed collective list of the best players of all time marginally less incoherent really worth the moral compromise? Seventy-eight percent of voters said yes.

It’s a particularly frustrating outcome for two reasons. First is that Jones received disproportionate support from newer voters. Of the 37 BBWAA members who cast a ballot for the first time in 2026 and who have revealed their picks, 34 checked off Jones’ name. We as a culture like to think that we are moving away from countenancing domestic violence — that attitudes change as old boys’ clubs (like the Cooperstown electorate) get younger and more diverse. Yet the BBWAA is heading in the other direction. Which doesn’t bode well for the next few years as abusers like Miguel Cabrera and Aroldis Chapman reach the ballot.

More importantly, Jones represents an inflection point in how voters interpret the so-called “character clause,” because there is no recent precedent for the BBWAA electing an admitted domestic abuser. Yes, there are plenty of scumbags in the Hall of Fame, and a number of objectionable candidates over the last few years have coincidentally fallen short for less-important reasons. But Jones is the only player to be selected to Cooperstown despite facing (let alone having pled guilty to) allegations this detailed and gruesome since MLB instituted its first domestic violence policy in 2015. The only player in my lifetime I can recall the BBWAA selecting amidst remotely comparable allegations is David Ortiz, whose financial dispute with his ex-partner led to mutual restraining orders and accusations of threats and intimidation. Unless I’m forgetting someone — a crucial caveat as such stories do not always make headlines2 — that’s it. Bobby Cox got in via a different selection process, the less-transparent Eras Committee. Roberto Alomar and Kirby Puckett were inducted before their worst scandals broke.

I’m under no illusions that Johan Santana went one-and-done because of his sexual battery accusation instead of his simply being underrated, or that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have been kept out due to their domestic violence and child-grooming allegations, respectively, rather than PEDs. Yet even if unintentionally, the writers had set a precedent of generally keeping players accused of such heinous things out of the Hall of Fame. In electing Jones, the BBWAA didn’t merely decline to draw a moral line. They retreated from the one they had already effectively established.

I suppose the silver lining is that Jones’ on-field accomplishments were clearly worthy of Cooperstown, so if this collective Andrew Berry-esque disinterest in athletes’ personal conduct is a sunk cost, then at least his getting 78 percent of the vote suggests that player-evaluation standards have improved since he earned a mere seven percent support in his 2018 ballot debut. But he’s not the only manifestation of that…

Increased hope of future inductions…

The relative dearth of strong candidates on this year’s Cooperstown ballot is bittersweet. On the one hand, it’s a sign that the backlog from the writers’ notorious stinginess is finally clearing up. On the other, it’s a reflection of how many worthy candidates from recent overcrowded ballots were prematurely dropped from consideration after failing to reach the five-percent threshold for another shot. However you slice it, the manageable crop of returning names, combined with a conspicuously shallow slate of newly eligible candidates and the curious phenomenon of critical masses of veteran sportswriters sometimes deciding that players have gotten magically better many years after they retired, made this ballot a great opportunity for holdovers to consolidate their support.

After Beltrán and Jones, the top finisher was Chase Utley. I remain flummoxed that Utley, who was an inner-circle great in his prime, will require (at least) a fourth try to earn his flowers. The silver lining is that, after reaching 59 percent in 2026, he is on track to get in soon. Every candidate to get 57 percent of the vote on their third ballot has eventually reached 75 percent, and the only player to earn 43 percent support on their third try who hasn’t gotten into Cooperstown one way or another is Omar Vizquel (whose candidacy was subsequently tanked by off-field scandals). Utley will be the headliner on the 2027 ballot, and another increase as big as the one he got this year would be more than enough to put him over the line in 12 months.

Arguably the biggest narrative shift came belongs to Utley’s teammate, Bobby Abreu. Abreu, who initially barely cleared the five-percent threshold to remain on the ballot, leaped from 20 percent in 2025 to 31 percent in 2026. In practical terms, that’s not huge — especially with only three more years of eligibility remaining. But by vibes, which if we’re being honest is what Cooperstown voting largely comes down to, that feels like the difference between a marginal candidate and a legitimate consideration. Most players who exceeded 30 percent on their seventh ballot and weren’t dragged down by character-clause questions have gotten in eventually. Abreu is now notably ahead of fellow outfielder and eventual inductee Larry Walker’s trajectory. Fellow Phillie Jimmy Rollins also took a notable step forward on his fourth try on the ballot, going from 18 percent last year to 25 percent now. Moving around the horn, Dustin Pedroia (21 percent) and David Wright (15 percent) nearly doubled their respective shares from a year ago.

There are some big gainers on the pitching side, too. Félix Hernández saw his support shoot up from 21 percent in his 2025 debut to 46 percent now; there is no precedent for a candidate reaching that level on their second ballot without getting voted in later. Andy Pettitte, whose support had already doubled from 14 percent to 28 percent last year, nearly lapped himself again with 48 percent in 2026. Even with only two years of eligibility left, nearly every candidate who cleared a third of the vote on their eighth try (as Pettitte did comfortably) is now in Cooperstown. Most of the exceptions are juicers, which also applies to Pettitte, though the more-than-threefold increase in his support over the last two years implies that voters are more open-minded about him than Bonds or Clemens, so he has a real chance. It also helps that we’ve reached an inflection point for modern aces…

…especially for pitchers.

A year ago, when CC Sabathia made it into the Hall of Fame on his first try, I observed that he was the worst pitcher the BBWAA had elected in my lifetime. (This was not a dig at Sabathia, who was clearly deserving.) I posited that his induction represented an inflection point for Cooperstown pitchers:

Lesser pitchers have gotten in in the past or via the Veterans Committee, but the BBWAA’s recent standards have been incredibly high. I would argue that, given how the league has changed and pitching strategies have evolved, they have been impossibly high for modern starters. It took Mussina six elections to get in. Blyleven had to wait until his 14th try. Kevin Brown, David Cone, and Rick Reuschel were one-and-dones. There ended up to be good reasons not to vote for Curt Schilling, but I’ll never understand why he wasn’t an easy yes before that.

Sabathia getting in on his first ballot with a resounding 87 percent of the vote feels like the writers planting a flag to modernize their standards.

It’s hard to say for sure what drives momentum in Cooperstown campaigns, though this year’s surges in support for Hernández and Pettitte offer early support for my theory. Yet the biggest evidence for the electorate’s evolving mindset is the support for Cole Hamels. Hamels was the definition of a modern ace, but changes in pitcher usage and the league run environment rendered his numbers fairly pedestrian by the Hall’s standards. He’s got a long way to go from his initial 24 percent support to 75 percent, but there is plenty of precedent for players who start out in that range getting in later. And looking over the list of starters who went one-and-done on recent ballots, the fact that he so comfortably cleared the five-percent threshold to maintain eligibility is itself a sign of progress. We’ll see if this group continues consolidating support next year — and whether their success will extend to longtime holdover Mark Buehrle and 2027 newcomer Jon Lester.

Finally, checking in on the beat I’ve covered for years…

Anonymous ballots are at it again

The secret ballot is a foundational principle of representative democracy. Ordinary citizens must be free to express their political desires without fear of intimidation. This does not apply to the BBWAA electorate. Voting for the Hall of Fame is a privilege, not a right. The honor is bestowed only upon veteran sportswriters, who definitionally both possess expertise in analyzing and communicating their opinions about baseball and a journalistic responsibility to disclose their roles in creating the news they cover. But don’t take my word for it: the BBWAA members themselves have repeatedly voted to make all their Cooperstown votes public, only to be overruled by the Hall of Fame’s leadership.

There is a persistent, conspicuous difference in results between writers who reveal their ballots and their more-secretive peers. In the early days of social media, it was possible to chalk this up to demographics: the voters who took the time to post their selections on Twitter were probably younger and more interested in modern analytics than their less-online peers. Nowadays, when the organization has voted multiple times to make writers’ picks mandatory and ballot contains a checkbox asking the electorate to opt into sharing them with no further effort required, that’s a tougher argument to make.

The 232 ballots that were revealed before the election, as diligently recorded by Ryan Thibadoux, Anthony Calamis, and Adam Dore via the BBHOF Tracker, do not represent the whole group of transparency-oriented voters; the BBWAA will officially release the full list of shared ballots in a couple weeks. But comparing the preliminary results from public vs. anonymous voters yields some familiar trends:

• Those who shared their picks checked off more players, at an average of 6.4 voters per ballot compared to their secretive peers’ 5.0.

• Anonymous voters were more likely to snub the two inductees, leaving both Beltrán (16 percent vs. 9 percent) and Jones (22 percent vs. 16 percent) off their ballots at notably higher rates.

• The 24-percent delta between Chase Utley’s share among public (70 percent) and private votes (46 percent) would be tied for the ninth-largest since the BBWAA began publishing ballots in 2012…with himself a year ago (among a few other instances).

• The player who got the biggest relative boost among anonymous voters? Omar Vizquel, who was named on 13 percent of public ballots but 24 percent of secret ones. I wonder if his supporters were simply ashamed to have their names attached to a candidate who has been accused of such horrific things.

While the ultimate outcome was the same among both electorates, it’s worth noting that anonymous voters once again voted objectively worse than their more-transparent peers. The top ten players on the ballot by rWAR all earned more support from public ballots than secret ones. More damningly, the same can be said for the top 12 vote-getters — meaning private electors’ picks (or omissions) were less-defensible according to the voters themselves. Which is in keeping with a long-established inverse correlation between how qualified the writers think players are and how willing their naysayers were to own up to their contrarianism.

I’ve said it before, and until either ballot-sharing becomes mandatory or this phenomenon abates, I’ll say it again: If you are a veteran sportswriter who communicates your thoughts on baseball for a living and you are not confident that you can explain your Cooperstown ballot in a logical way, you voted wrong.

In an underrated classic episode from Season 9 of The Simpsons, Krusty the Clown decides to retire from comedy. Krusty had not previously realized that his predictable antics and ubiquitous merchandizing had made him into a punchline, and in a prescient prediction of today’s anti-cancel-culture crusaders he insists the problem is “comedy ain’t funny anymore” rather than his own tired act. But his has-been status isn’t news to the rest of Springfield, so the first question Krusty gets at his farewell press conference after he announces his retirement is:

“But Krusty, why now? Why not 20 years ago?”

This line was the first thing that popped into my head when the Cleveland Browns announced that they had fired Kevin Stefanski after six seasons as head coach. And with the concurrent news that general manager Andrew Berry will be retained, it’s a scene that I’ll surely be thinking about again in a year or two, too.

As a general rule, I don’t speculate about sports leaders’ job securities or call for them to get fired because there is a real human cost to such decisions. I have worked in professional sports. I’ve been in the building when coaches and executives were let go. It sucks. Even if you saw it coming, even if it’s the right decision, even if it’s ultimately good for your own career — and especially if the foregoing do not apply — a pall is cast over the office. I feel badly for the countless lower-level Browns employees whose names and roles fans don’t know, who may be concerned for their own job security under a new boss or sad to see their friend get canned.

Having said that, when you take the top job in a locker room or front office, you know you are kicking off a countdown clock until the day you are dismissed. Great coaches and executives get fired. Hall of Famers get fired. Stefanski’s (and Berry’s) six years on the job are a pretty good run for a head coach in the NFL, especially when it’s been five years since their last playoff win, and especially in an organization that had averaged a high-profile firing every year over the preceding two decades.

More to the point, I find it hard to feel sympathy for Stefanski or Berry given their respective efforts to rehabilitate Deshaun Watson’s personal reputation. Venerating the character of a man whom at least 30 different women have accused of sexual assault or harassment has been one of the Browns brass’ key job responsibilities since their ill-fated trade for him four years ago. Berry presented himself as having led the front office’s vetting efforts (creating the pretense for welcoming such a heinous man into the organization), while Stefanski has proven an indefatigable font of empty clichés about how hard Watson is working and how devoted he is to his teammates. You can tell how little they respect the fanbase and care about the issue of sexual violence by contrasting the specific qualities they choose to adulate with how Watson conducts himself in interviews and on the sidelines — they can’t even be bothered to lie well. Maybe Stefanski and Berry sincerely believe he’s a good guy, maybe their defenses of Watson are disingenuous, maybe they resent the party lines they are expected to parrot. Whatever the case, in my book their running cover for such a monster is far grosser than my wanting an NFL team employee to lose their job. If they’re offended by a lack of fan decorum, I guess they know how the rest of us feel.

The announcement of Kevin Stefanski as head coach in 2020 was one of my most exciting days as a Browns fan. Stefanski was young. He came from a successful organization. He cared about analytics and having good decision-making processes. He had a reputation as a dynamic strategist who was creative in designing plays and bold in calling them. In short, Stefanski was the exact antithesis of the kind of hire Cleveland normally makes, and therefore exactly the balm this sorry franchise needed.

His tenure got off to an auspicious start. The 2020 Browns finished over .500 for the first time in over a decade and made the playoffs for the first time in nearly two. Stefanski’s club won a playoff game for the first time in 26 years, though he was quarantined in his basement for it. I will go to my grave certain that Cleveland would have gone to the Super Bowl if not for a particularly egregious blown call in Kansas City a week later. Stefanski was a genius!

The success proved fleeting. The Browns went 8-9 in 2021 as Stefanski’s working relationship with young quarterback Baker Mayfield soured on every level. Was the famously brash Mayfield too pigheaded to take responsibility for his own performance? Or were the team brass more interested in finding a scapegoat for a disappointing season than giving their quarterback the support he needed while he managed nagging injuries? Every Browns fan has their own theory for how to mete out the blame. Here’s one thing we do know: Two years after Stefanski was hired (in large part due to a belief that he could unlock Mayfield’s full potential) the partnership between the wunderkind coach and his face-of-the-franchise mentee had irreparably frayed. Here’s another: Mayfield has led his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to two division titles in three years, while Stefanski got sacked before he won his first.

Luckily for Stefanski, the front office provided him with a top-notch replacement as QB1. Say what you want about Deshaun Watson off the field, but at least the Browns landed one of the best signal callers in the sport. Indeed, the player for whom Cleveland gave up three first round picks, a record-breaking contract, and the organization’s soul thrived in Stefanski’s system. Oh wait — my mistake. Watson has ranked among the worst quarterbacks in the league since entering Stefanski’s tutelage. In each of the three seasons in which Watson has taken snaps (between all the time he has missed while suspended or injured), the offense has played conservatively, aimlessly, and sloppily with him under center. That’s two separate theretofore franchise quarterbacks who flamed out on Stefanski’s watch. How many does it take to decide that the players aren’t the only problem?

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Stefanski hasn’t clicked with any quarterback since that first year with Mayfield. You’d think a coach who’s considered as creative and dynamic as Stefanski is could mold a seemingly unexceptional player into a great QB1. Yet the Browns cycled through 13 different starting QBs in his six-year tenure, and none found sustainable success — including 2025 draftees Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders, who have some of the worst results of anyone who’s taken snaps in the NFL this year. A year ago one would have made an exception for Joe Flacco, who signed off his couch down the stretch in 2023 and became Stefanski’s muse for an aggressive offensive scheme en route to an unlikely playoff run. Then the Browns tried to run it back with Flacco this year and he too was terrible…until he was traded to the cross-state rival Cincinnati Bengals, and the 40-year-old veteran spent a month playing like one of the best quarterbacks in the sport as soon as he started working with a new coach.

A less-remarked-upon but nonetheless conspicuous hallmark of Stefanski’s teams has been clubhouse dysfunction. Per the most-recent NFLPA player survey, Stefanski was less popular in his own locker room than any other head coach in the league — only four coaches last year earned grades below a B for being respectful of players’ time and responsive to internal feedback, and the other three had already been fired by the time the results were published. Locker room frustrations spilled out publicly in four of the last five seasons. This year the drama started before kickoff, as the team’s preseason quarterback competition was handled so clumsily that even the winner publicly complained about not being put in a good position to succeed. Chemistry is a chicken-and-egg thing and it’s hard to conclusively compartmentalize these issues from the general frustration of losing, yet Stefanski’s failure at and/or disinterest in fostering a constructive clubhouse environment has been palpable since at least 2023.

Speaking of losing, Stefanski’s career record in regular-season and playoff games for which he was physically present stands at 45-58. He has a .391 winning percentage since he watched the miraculous playoff win against the Pittsburgh Steelers — the lone postseason victory of his tenure — from his couch. In six years he never won the AFC North, and he climbed out of the last two places in the standings only once. Recent tanking notwithstanding, remember that Stefanski achieved this while mostly overseeing rosters that were talented on paper and believed themselves to be championship contenders.

Kevin Stefanski will reportedly be sought after for other coaching vacancies around the league, but I can’t fathom why. His players didn’t like him. Every quarterback he touched turned into a pumpkin. His clubhouses were a mess, both figuratively and literally. His vaunted playcalling genius never materialized. As far as I can tell, his only distinct skill was being shameless enough to show up every week and tell reporters that actually Deshaun looked pretty good out there today. And he never won anything, even while helming rosters that had Super Bowl aspirations. A team that hires Stefanski may as well sign Zach Wilson to play quarterback — either way, you’re basing a personnel decision on how the industry talked about a guy five years ago. It’s not surprising that Stefanski got fired. The only shock is that it took this long.

It’s hard to evaluate an NFL GM from the outside. In a sport like baseball, it’s easy enough to infer who makes decisions. There may be some nuance in how day-to-day responsibilities are split between a titular GM and a higher-ranking president role, and the broad direction of the team is subject to budgetary constraints from above, but at the end of the day you generally know who calls the shots. Contrast that with football, where it’s common for the head coach to have a hand in personnel decisions, and owners often get involved in ways that their counterparts in other sports do not. The latter certainly applies to the Haslam family, who own the Browns and are not exactly known to be silent partners. For Cleveland the ambiguity was further heightened by the presence of chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta, who until November held some degree of dotted-line influence on football moves that was never clarified publicly.

So let’s start with what we do know. Andrew Berry was hired as the nominal head of football operations at the end of a dramatic tanking process. He took the reins in 2020 for what was supposed to be a nascent championship core’s first taste of success, then stood by as the team steadily stumbled backwards. Now it’s 2026, and the man who oversaw the premature collapse of the last Cleveland dynasty is being trusted to guide the next rebuild.

The Watson trade alone should have been sufficient grounds for cleaning house. Forget the moral repugnance of wanting such a despicable man to lead your team. The front office identified Watson as the missing piece who would take them to the promised land; it would be hard to bring in other significant upgrades after spending $230 million of salary cap space and three years of first-round picks on Watson. And he sucks! The guy for whom the Browns cashed in all their chips is one of the worst players in the NFL. When he’s on the field, that is: Between his legal and health issues Watson has missed 50 of Cleveland’s 69 games since he became the face of the franchise. In their zeal to consummate this Faustian bargain, Berry and his staff committed the single biggest failure of player evaluation in the history of modern sports. Other GMs get let go for far less.

And even if Watson had played well, the trade was fundamentally oxymoronic in its motivations. Cleveland finally had an incumbent quarterback who could play at a respectable level, even after a down year when he was banged-up. But heading into the 2022 they convinced themselves that Mayfield was holding the team back, and upgrading under center was essential for making the most of their nascent contention window. Fair enough. Naturally they traded for a quarterback whom everyone knew was facing a lengthy suspension that would cost him much (if not all) of the following season. By dealing their next three years of first-round draft picks, the Browns doubled down on 2022 being their best chance to win a trophy — while simultaneously punting that season by building the roster around a player who would miss it. This dissonance was apparent at the time even to a schmuck like me. Why didn’t it occur to Berry?

Many fans were (and remain) convinced that the Haslams engineered the Watson trade over the objections of the team’s football operations leaders, particularly Berry. It’s never been clear whether this rumor was substantiated beyond a cognitive-dissonance disbelief that an ostensibly smart front office would make a decision this stupid. Still, even if it were true, it’s hardly exculpatory for Berry. Why does the GM have so little trust inside the organization that the team would make a franchise-defining move without his buy-in? Shouldn’t Berry, armed with insights from the industry-class analytics department he oversees, have been able to talk the Haslams out of their mistake? Or at least convince them to cut their losses and get a new quarterback in 2024, once it was clear that Watson was unplayable and (as had allegedly been the case with Mayfield two years prior) holding back a potential contending team?

It’s reductive to judge Berry’s six-year tenure by one transaction, but the fact is the Watson trade overshadows every other decision he’s made. You can point to several savvy smaller moves he’s pulled off, and he’s forged a reputation as a shrewd drafter. Reading between the lines, it sounds like Berry owes his job security to the success of his 2025 rookie class. (Naturally, one of his selections has faced disturbing off-field allegations. He certainly has a type.) Yet there’s a limit to what you can do when so many first-round picks, so much cap space, and so important a position are all already locked up thanks to the worst trade this team (and maybe any team) has ever made.

The results speak for themselves. In over a half-decade on the job, Berry’s teams have never won the AFC North. Their only playoff win came in his first year as GM, with a roster he had mostly inherited. After two straight last-place finishes, the locker room has neither as much talent nor reason to hope for the future as on the day Berry was hired. If he is doing his job well and the Watson deal is a mere exception to the rule, why is the team in such sorry shape?

I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the value of MLB front office personnel, offering a framework for understanding team employees’ impact analogous to that of evaluating players. While my focus was baseball, not football, the general principles from my MLB research should apply to the NFL (where the stratification of rosters is wider and the prospect-development timeline is shorter and therefore less subject to factors besides scoutable talent). Among my main takeaways was that owners should be quicker to cut bait with mediocre executives. Once you find yourself questioning your confidence in your GM, indecision comes at a meaningful cost:

In today’s game team owners typically give underachieving GMs a season or two to improve the team…. However, if even a moderately below-average GM can cost his team several wins a season, by the time a subpar incumbent has performed poorly enough for his job to be in jeopardy, giving him an extended last chance to prove himself is probably not worth the considerable risk of continuing to trust the team to someone who is not running it very well.

Think about where the Browns were when Andrew Berry took over. Look at them now. Do you want the same person who built this roster to oversee the next rebuild? To hire the next coach? Do you have faith in this braintrust — who went all-in on Deshaun Watson, who chose Jameis Winston (another multiple-time sexual assailant) over Joe Flacco two years ago, who crammed every warm body they could find into the quarterback room last summer and still never found a respectable starter — to identify Cleveland’s future QB1? I’m open to the possibility that Berry will be a good GM from here on out, that if you wipe the slate clean the next chapter of his tenure will be a positive one. But after six years of failure, the smart money is clearly against it.

I’ve observed before that the Browns’ decision-making process makes more sense if you assume that the Haslams care more about signaling their opposition to cancel culture than fielding a good football team. In that case you can see why they are happy to stick with Berry, a suitably respectable yet pliant figurehead who could probably rationalize signing Jeffrey Epstein if his measurables were good enough. Perhaps the Haslams will make a change if they ever decide they want to win.

The Browns are better off today than they were yesterday. In cutting ties with Stefanski, the team has finally taken a step forward. But retaining Berry means that the other leg, the one that’s been standing on clearly shaky ground for even longer, is still stubbornly rooted in place. And if one foot is moving while the other remains planted, all you can do is walk around in circles.

In that fateful Simpsons episode, Krusty’s retirement announcement accidentally turns into his sharpest comedy routine in years. He enjoys a brief career resurgence as a George Carlin-esque social critic before once again heeding the call of the lazy sellout. It’s a fitting comparison for the Browns, whose organizational stewards are not just clowns but cynical hacks. And here I am still rooting for them, so the joke is on me.

With fewer essays to reflect on, plotting out my traditional year-in-review post — in which I find some schmaltzy common thread that connects my favorite things I wrote in the preceding 12 months — at first seemed like a daunting challenge. Until I realized that my reduced output was itself a reflection of the biggest thing I learned this year: The importance of being deliberate with my time, and therefore spending less of it in front of a screen.

In my first post of 2025, on Inauguration Day, I predicted that I would cut down on my political writing in the Trump Era. Not because there would be less to critique under the new administration than there had been with Biden. To the contrary — most of my political commentary was motivated by my frustration that those in power purported to share my values yet were failing to uphold them. As the Republicans gained trifecta control of the federal government, that people like me disapproved of their policies shifted from an annoyance to our leaders to their goal:

These people do not portend to share my priorities or my beliefs about what bettering the world means. The premise that underlay my recent political writing no longer applies. … For the moment, the notion of writing about more important things than my normal beats of sports and food seems futile. What’s the point?

Looking back, perhaps it’s not surprising that the two other political essays I wrote this year were on subjects where the critiques extended to Democrats too: the disingenuous weaponization of antisemitism, which has dangerously escalated under Trump yet must be understood as a continuation of the prior administration’s offensive tokenizing of the Jewish community and the astroturfed bipartisan insistence on equating my safety with unconditional support for Israel; and the utter humiliation of Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign, as party leaders demonstrated both how much depravity they would prefer to swallow rather than cede even an inch to the coalition’s left wing, and their own impotence in their failure.

But the bigger reason why I wrote less in 2025 was simpler: I found more-fulfilling ways to use my time.

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The best thing I did this year, for my community and for myself, was volunteering for Lasagna Love. Lasagna Love is a nonprofit group that takes one of the core principles of being a good neighbor — if someone is having a hard time, you bring them a lasagna — and applies it at scale, pairing willing home chefs with nearby families who could use some comfort food. No judgment, no questions asked. I delivered my first lasagne around the holidays a year ago and gradually increased my involvement over the next few months. Now I am the local volunteer coordinator for the Providence area, in addition to my typical schedule of cooking for four families a week. By my count I made 172 lasagne this year for folks in need in northern and central Rhode Island. (Not including the ones we ate ourselves or brought to social gatherings, which it turns out is much easier when you make them often enough that you can do it from muscle memory.)

I recount this not to toot my own horn but in hopes that my experience clicks with someone reading this. At a time of widespread suffering, when the news is full of so much pain being inflicted on so many people in so many ways, you may feel personally obliged to follow every tragedy. Yet finding some small way to make a difference in your community does more good than doomscrolling, both for the world and for you. I heartily recommend Lasagna Love as such an outlet: it’s quick to sign up, you set your own schedule, and you can even use my surprisingly simple recipe. Wherever you’re reading this, there’s probably a Lasagna Love team in your area that could use the help. But the most important part is to do something.

This volunteering is one of many things I’ve done this year that have made my life feel more well-rounded. I joined a brass band. Making music with other people is a remarkable experience, and one that I hadn’t done regularly since college. So is bringing merriment to marches, civic events, and celebrations of local advocacy groups. I’ve started a more-consistent exercise regimen. I’ve been more deliberate about planning social events and instigating meeting friends for a beer. In my first post on this blog nearly four years ago, I wrote about the freeing sensation of my identity no longer being defined by my job. Since then, for various reasons — partly due to life circumstances, partly thanks to my base reflexive introversion — I often lacked a good answer for what I was doing with the extra time that my improved work-life balance afforded. In 2025, for the first time since college, I built a routine of extracurricular activities that didn’t revolve around staring at a screen.

Which isn’t to say I’m done writing. Far from it! I am grateful to have an independent home for the kind of baseball research I have been doing since I was a teenager — like estimating how much the league’s best swing-off hitter would be worth if the thrilling tiebreaker for this year’s All-Star Game’s replaced extra innings for other games too, or reviving and spiffing up my old Simple WAR Calculator, or (in my most-read post of the year) finding quantitative evidence that modern managers are pulling their starters too early, as overexposing the bullpen offsets the gains from mitigating the times-through-the-order penalty — without the pressure to publish on a certain schedule. The Hall of Fame selection process, about which I’ve always had a lot to say, was both the subject of one of my first posts of the year (on the takeaways from the 2025 BBWAA vote) and the main focus of my recent writing (whom I would include on my ballot, and particularly why Chase Utley deserves more support than he’s received).

I am also incredibly lucky to have an audience — which surpassed 1,000 email subscribers in October, not counting the many of you who may read this through Substack’s internal ecosystem or links on social media — who indulges and even appreciates my myriad musings on other subjects. It was heartening to hear from readers that I captured emotions that readers had wanted to articulate this year, from the collective thrill of watching World Series Game 7, one of the best displays of the sport of baseball ever broadcast; to the horror of a school shooting happening two miles from where we live, in a classroom in which I have sat. You have helped me commiserate about the Cleveland Browns, whose organization-wide commitment to mediocrity is resulting in a season that’s as aimless as I gloomily forecast it would be. You may have made the “wicked” deviled-egg recipe I shared or used my brewery reviews from our trip to Portland to help you sort through the overwhelming beer landscape of southern Maine. I even got engaging responses to the story of my worst day of Little League and the latest chapter of my longrunning obsession with optimizing holiday music. At a time when so much of society is pushing AI-based content down our throats, it warms my heart that so many of you are willing to humor my hobby. Whatever you think of my writing, I hope you always find it at least recognizably human.

But do you know who is definitely a real being and not ChatGPT? The next person you see in real life after you read this sentence. And the next one. And the one after that.

I am not the first person to encourage you to spend less time on your screens. I don’t want to sound preachy, and I often do not follow my own advice. What I can tell you is that, in 2025, I made a concerted effort to avoid defaulting to doomscrolling, and my day-to-day life has been all the better for it. I made friends I never would have met if I had stayed home. I found connections I never would have forged if I had been looking at my phone. I saw parts of my own city that I never would have been to if I had given in to inertia and my instinctive introversion. Using half-baked ideas as fodder for conversations with friends instead of turning my hot takes into a couple-thousand-word blog posts means I have fewer pieces to look back on with pride than I did at the end of the prior few years. It was worth it.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support and readership this year. I hope that you will stick around for whatever ephemera I feel like writing in 2026, that you will understand if there continues to be less of it, and that you too will find joy and fulfillment in your offline endeavors.

It’s snowing in Providence today. It’s a light, gentle sprinkling, but there’s enough to blanket the neighborhood. It’s serene and peaceful. All is calm, all is bright. Even knowing that it was in the forecast, it was to startling to wake up in a snowglobe after going to bed in the state we did last night. I’m sure when I go out and shovel it will feel less magical, and maybe then the reality of what our city went through yesterday will hit again. I’m going to enjoy the serenity for a few more minutes.

Mine is nowhere close to the most important voice right now. I am at most quaternary to the horrific events at Brown University last night. Nor is our community’s experience unique — as unfathomable as it is to write this sentence, this was not even the first school shooting that some of the students had endured. But mine is the voice I have to offer.

Rhode Island is a small place. It’s a close-knit community where everybody knows everybody. Twenty minutes is too far a drive. The line if you’re traveling more than a single town over is “pack a lunch.” We are about as far from Brown as possible within the Providence city limits, which means we live close enough that I have walked there.

For all the talk of ivory towers, Brown is an open campus and a major hub for the community. I’d wager that no one in Providence is more than two degrees of separation from the events of this weekend. If you don’t know a student who was locked down on campus, or someone who works at the university or within its vast apparatus, or is among the staff of the first-response groups and medical facilities who were on the scene and caring for the victims last night, then surely your neighbor does.

I went to Brown. I have walked through the cluster of academic buildings where the chaos began easily thousands of times. I studied economics, just like the students who were reviewing for their final exam when a gunman entered their classroom. I have sat in that classroom.

Every location mentioned in a news story felt like someone rifling through a file of my core memories. How could anything serious ever happen in the Sciences Library? And who calls it “the Sciences Library”? Cops with tactical gear marched across the green where we held intramural softball practice. The dorm where we always pregamed for an annual fancy party was locked down. I never thought I would be relieved to hear about people being stuck at the worst campus cafeteria.

When we moved back to Rhode Island two years ago, I made a point not to spend too much time near campus. I wanted my life in Providence to feel like a new chapter, not revisiting an old one. But in a place this small there’s only so much you can do. I have friends who live just off campus. My band’s rehearsal space and the best sandwich shop in the city are right nearby. When I drove to a recent event downtown, the closest parking spot I could find was right in front of the ceremonial campus gates. A week ago we went to an event off College Hill’s main drag, from whence you could see my freshman dorm. The police released a grainy video of the suspect fleeing after the shooting, in which he is seen rounding a street corner that I walked by just last month.

Brown’s campus is one of the most beautiful places in the world. When friends and family come to visit, we often take them for a stroll around College Hill to admire the architecture and landscaping. I wonder aloud about how I could ever have been stressed in such an idyllic place. My heart breaks for the students and staff for whom these images will forever be clouded by shadows.

We were out of town Saturday afternoon and were about to drive back to Providence when the news slowed us down. It was strange to help people navigate how concerned they should be for us. We were safe, as were all the people we immediately checked in on, and in fact we were far from both home and College Hill, but we live only a couple miles away, but that’s actually pretty far in Rhode Island terms, but in a community this close-knit a disturbance to one string vibrates throughout the whole tapestry. I gradually started shortening the story to “We’re okay.”

It was surreal to see news and rumors on social media alongside commentary from people for whom it was not personal. For what felt like hours I was glued to my phone, cycling between texting — checking in on friends who were in the immediate area, assuring loved ones that we were safe ourselves, trading I don’t know what to say with other rattled college friends — and refreshing all the feeds in fruitless quests for updates. Social media provided a blend of heartfelt expressions of vicarious concern and grief, generic condolences, and anodyne chatter about unrelated things. C’est la internet. “Ugh,” I saw someone reply to a headline about the shooting, with all the gravity and sobriety of someone finding an issue with their takeout order.

I thought back to a couple years ago, when a surprising number of people decided that a shooting near our apartment in South Philly would make for genial small talk. I wonder how many times I will have to curtly correct well-meaning people that this is not a fun topic of conversation in the weeks ahead.

We were with some of my best friends from college when we got the news. It was a strange juxtaposition of being immediately physically distant from Providence yet feeling emotionally very close to Brown. There is a worthwhile conversation to be had about the role and exclusivity of such institutions. I understand that it is an immense privilege to have gone to such a school; accordingly, I do not expect everyone to care that the experience meant so much to me. For today, I simply ask you to trust me that it did, and that such feelings are virtually unanimous among alumni I know, of any age. Looking over at friends I first met 15 years ago while we treaded the same jagged cobblestones on which the shooter fled last night, I could not fathom how many people were feeling the words “Ever True” so deeply.

Life goes on, if we are lucky enough. The flurries are letting up and both the snow and reality are starting to sink in. I guess it’s time to shovel the sidewalk.

We can quantify just how shallow this class is. For those who lean on sabermetric evaluative frameworks to fill out their Cooperstown ballots, 60 wins above replacement is the typical standard at which a candidate becomes a clear yes. There are just seven nominees on the 2026 Baseball Writers Association of America ballot with 60+ career rWAR, the fewest since 2008 — and that includes two who are barely over the line at 60.2. The 11 players with 50+ rWAR (around the threshold for a borderline inductee) are the fewest since 2012.

The slate’s underwhelmingness is largely a function of how last year’s vote went. The usually stingy BBWAA electorate has corrected course of late, inducting three players two years in a row. This has helped mitigate the backlog of worthy candidates that plagued recent ballots. On the flipside, three players I definitely would have voted for (Russell Martin, Brian McCann, and Ben Zobrist) fell off the ballot, having failed to reach the five-percent threshold to get another try.

The holdovers are joined by a notably shallow crop of first-time-eligible candidates. This year is just the second time a ballot has contained fewer than three newbies with 40+ career WAR since 1987. Looking for something more sophisticated than raw WAR totals? Per Adam Darowski’s Hall Rating, which is standardized such that 100 is the threshold for induction, only two debutants have scores above 60. By Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system, just two ballot rookies come within 20 wins of the Cooperstown average for their respective positions — the fewest since 1978, and a stark drop-off from the 11 such players who were considered for the first time in 2025. (Which, in turn, was tied for the most since Jackie Robinson’s second season with the Dodgers.)

The upshot is that, as a vocal Big Hall guy who routinely advocates for more candidates than any writer is allowed to vote for, using up each of my (hypothetical) 10 allotted slots is unusually challenging this time. A year ago, there were 21 players on the ballot whom I thought merited serious consideration. A few minutes into sitting with the 2026 slate and considering their respective candidacies in the most-favorable lights I could, there were only eight names I was enthusiastic about checking off.

Yet Friend of The Lewsletter and actual Hall of Fame voter has convinced me that it is a voter’s duty to use all 10 of their available slots. In an essay last year explaining how he filled out his ballot that has stuck with me ever since, Sam articulated two critical asymmetries about the Cooperstown selection process. First, induction into the Hall is permanent, yet rejection is transient. There is effectively no limit to how many times a prior snub can be reconsidered. Second, fans are ultimately happier when beloved players who may fall short of conventional standards get in than when candidates on the bubble are turned away. “When you accept this,” Sam wrote, “there’s really not much point being a hard-line gatekeeper”:

Nobody has been “rejected” by the Hall of Fame, and so nobody who isn’t in sets the standard for who shouldn’t be in. They’re all just still waiting. Scores of long-retired players who we don’t currently think of Hall of Famers will be inducted someday, and then they’ll be Hall of Famers, helping define the “standards.” There’s no point saying “I can’t vote for Bobby Abreu if the superior Dwight Evans/Kenny Lofton/Jim Edmonds isn’t in.” It’s true that Dwight Evans is still waiting, but the future is long. He’s just not in yet. Betcha he’ll get in. Betcha they all get in.

The real consideration for a borderline player, Sam explained, “is whether I want to help him or slow him down.” I’m sold on this framing. And especially since the stress of going through an election cycle is so great that it is actuarially measurable for candidates on the bubble, I would rather let them in as quickly as possible. So I intend to use all 10 of my allotted (hypothetical) votes.

In recent election seasons, I have spilled thousands of words expounding upon my approach to the Hall of Fame and why each of the players I would vote for meet my standards. I may not have an actual vote, but during my years of not being allowed to write about baseball, being part of the annual Cooperstown conversations is what I missed most. Plus, given my stridence in calling for all Hall of Fame ballots to be made public, it seemed only fair to model the behavior I expect from real voters.

Most of what I have to say about this year’s best candidates has already been said. Of the 10 players I checked off on my mock ballot last year, five are still eligible in 2026: Bobby Abreu, Carlos Beltrán, Félix Hernández, Alex Rodríguez, and Chase Utley. There are two returning candidates whom I have supported in the past, and omitted in 2025 only because of the 10-vote limit: Mark Buehrle and Andy Pettitte. I have written plenty about all of them before, especially Utley, so I won’t rehash those arguments again here. That makes seven easy yeses from me.

You have probably inferred that I don’t consider doping or cheating to be a dealbreaker. To briefly summarize an argument I’ve made in depth before, I see these are sins against the sport, not society, and therefore it is ahistorical and unnecessary to retroactively penalize behavior that the league contemporaneously abided.1 By contrast, given how easily adulation of athletes’ on-field accomplishments bleeds into personal veneration, and that selective outrage undermines the sport’s occasional gestures towards taking the issue seriously, I am an automatic no on any player facing credible accusations of intimate partner violence. (If this hasn’t been your philosophy in the past, it’s not too late to start now.) Which this year applies to an unfortunately large group of candidates whom I would otherwise support: Andruw Jones, Manny Ramírez, Francisco Rodríguez, and Omar Vizquel.

The easiest addition to my list this year is Cole Hamels. Establishing new standards for starting pitchers in an age when reduced workloads put historical counting-stat benchmarks out of reach for even the game’s generational talents is still a work in progress. In the meantime, my suggested heuristic is that any modern starter who isn’t an obvious no should probably be in, and any borderline candidate ought to be an easy yes. Hamels was a true ace who ranks as one of the Top 60 pitchers of all time by Hall Rating and among the Top 75 by era-adjusted JAWS, and authored one of the greatest runs of playoff pitching of my lifetime en route to a 2008 World Series championship. CC Sabathia’s first-ballot election last year was a promising first step. Hopefully Sabathia’s success greases the skids for some of his contemporaries.

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But what about the rest of the slate?

In my prior mock-ballot write-ups, I haven’t focused much on the candidates who fall short of my bar for induction. Yet my initial list exhausted only eight of the 10 votes I plan to use. With two spots left on my ballot and 15 remaining candidates I had initially dismissed, I faced a different and more-challenging question than the usual premise of this exercise: Who among the players I snubbed is the easiest to talk myself into voting for?

At first glance, the first name left alphabetically is the best of the remaining first-time candidates. Ryan Braun has the makings of Hall-worthy résumé: he was an MVP (and a three-time top-three finisher), a Rookie of the Year, a five-time Silver Slugger, and a six-time All-Star. His top similarity-score comp on Baseball-Reference is in the Hall. Had he sustained his prime a couple years longer or provided positive value in the field, there would be more than a perfunctory case for his bust to adorn the Plaque Gallery. Yet Braun’s conduct as he contested his first suspension for PEDs, up to and including slandering the integrity of the urine test collector, was reprehensible. As a Jewish person in 2025 I have little patience for public figures making disingenuous claims of antisemitism to further their own self-interests. If he were actually a worthy candidate, I would think more deeply about whether Braun is merely a schmuck whose accomplishments can be compartmentalized from his character, or whether (like Curt Schilling) his behavior rose to the level of fully disqualifying. For this exercise, when I’ve already established that I don’t think he is good enough and am considering him as a mere gesture of goodwill, it’s a distinction without a difference.

For much of his early career (until his legal issues arose), Shin-Soo Choo was my favorite player. Three-time 20-20 players don’t grow on trees, and you could make a Ben Zobrist-esque argument that he deserves recognition for embodying an evolution in the game (the $130 million free-agent deal he signed 2013 was understood as a sign that the industry was finally valuing on-base skill properly). I’d enjoy the poetic justice of the most-snubbed All-Star candidate of his generation — he made his lone appearance at age 36, in what was merely his seventh-best season — earning the sport’s top honor. Yet he had only about three-and-a-half great years, and a similar number of merely good ones. I’m trying to avoid tit-for-tat comparisons like Choo can’t be in while Bobby Abreu is out, but Abreu’s contemporaneous candidacy is a template for how a convincing case for a solid-at-everything, underrated-in-his-day outfielder could look. Choo falls well short of that.

Edwin Encarnación is the kind of guy I’d love to find room for. There is no conventional case for him. His 424 home runs aren’t enough for a headlining statistic, he came well short of the effective 2,000-hit minimum, and no major WAR model has him ever eclipsing even five wins in a season. But he wasn’t that far off of some milestone numbers, and he’d probably have gotten there if he weren’t such a late bloomer — he had eight straight seasons with 32+ homers despite not topping 26 dingers until he was 29. And gosh, was he an exciting hitter. I previously argued that his longtime lineup-mate, José Bautista, should be a Hall of Famer. Encarnación didn’t quite reach the same heights, and on a deeper ballot I probably wouldn’t give him a second thought. This year, with spots to spare, it would be fun to offer him a salute.

Did you remember that Gio González once won 21 games in a season? Me neither. I admit that my reflex was that was he was a borderline candidate…to be on the ballot at all. But I realized that believing in laxer standards for starting pitchers, as I do, was incompatible with dismissing his case out of hand. González had maybe two ace-worthy seasons, and a few more really solid ones. Is that what greatness looks like for starters these days once you get past the inner-circle Scherzer-Verlander tier? Or was he just a reliable mid-rotation guy who punched above his weight for a couple years? Or is that, in turn, what second-rung greatness looks like for modern starters? You could liken González’ career to Buehrle’s, as a fellow lefty who was better than you remember…though Buehrle threw 70 percent more innings and was also one of the best-fielding pitchers of all time. I don’t think González is a Hall of Famer. But if we’re serious about setting new standards for starters, there are worse uses of a token vote.

In his prime, Alex Gordon was one of the best defensive players in the game (relative to his position), a good hitter, and arguably the face of one of the most-iconic championship cores of the 21st century. From 2011-14 he ranked tenth in the Majors in fWAR and won the first four of his eventual eight Gold Gloves. Had he sustained those superlatives for a few more years, or played a tougher defensive position, he would have an interesting case. Winning eight Gold Gloves is nothing to sneeze at (hold that thought for the next paragraph) but it means less when he did it as a left fielder, especially since there are two other players on the ballot who won even more times in center.

One of them is Torii Hunter. I confess I’ve been confused that Hunter, who depending on your preferred flavor of WAR never had a single five-win season, perennially picks up just enough support to remain on the ballot after Jim Edmonds and Kenny Lofton were one-and-dones, but I tried to go into this exercise with an open mind. Before the disqualifying allegations against him came to light, I had argued that Omar Vizquel was a Hall of Famer, because in my book being one of the greatest defenders of all time is sufficient for induction no matter how he fared in the batter’s box. Hunter won nine Gold Gloves while playing a premium defensive position in center field. Wouldn’t the same logic apply to him? Just 20 other players in history have won at least as many Gold Gloves at a position harder than first base, and the only ones who aren’t in Cooperstown are either not yet eligible or currently on the ballot. Yet it’s tough to argue that Hunter set the standard for his generation of center fielders (as Vizquel did for shortstops) when three of the six outfielders in history to win even more Gold Gloves were his contemporaries: Ken Griffey Jr. and Andruw Jones’ careers overlapped with Hunter’s, and Ichiro shared the American League honors every single year Hunter won plus one more. And while I typically prefer retconning awards to be a strictly positive exercise, it’s worth noting that Hunter won in several years when he rated as a below-average fielder by the then-state-of-the-art defensive metrics, and a modern electorate would likely have given him only two or three. Overall it’s a tenuous case, but in a year when I have spots on my ballot to spare, I won’t rule him out.

I have long believed that Cooperstown candidates should be considered in terms of whatever statistical frameworks were most-favorable to them, even if they are now antiquated. In Matt Kemp’s case, that means giving him some credit for how he rated in a now-deprecated version of WAR. As recently noted, Baseball-Reference contemporaneously valued Kemp’s 2011 season as worth 10 wins above replacement. Reaching 10 WAR in a single year, even once, is a marker of what sports statisticians call “signature significance,” in that almost every hitter who’s ever done it is a Hall of Famer. Subsequent updates to Baseball-Reference’s formulae have knocked his total down to eight WAR (in line with FanGraphs’ model). He’d be a negative outlier anyway: While every other player on the list had at least one more six-win season, 2011 was the only time Kemp reached even five. It’s a flimsy foundation for a Cooperstown résumé, but according to a commonly accepted metric of his time, Kemp’s best year outshined all but one other candidate’s on the ballot (Alex Rodríguez). That has to be worth something.

Howie Kendrick’s memory will live forever via his decisive go-ahead home run in Game 7 of the 2019 World Series. He was a good hitter and a fun player. He is not a Hall of Famer.

Nick Markakis was a consistently tough out and one of the most-durable players of his era, averaging 154 games a year through his age-34 season. He was a roughly league-average player in the aggregate, with a prorated WAR-per-game below Rabbit Maranville’s. He is not a Hall of Famer.

Daniel Murphy had a legendary run in the 2015 playoffs and two pretty good years after that.2 He is probably the worst player on the ballot, and I’ll remember him most as a trailblazer for bigotry: In an unfortunate presage of the recent clubhouse backlashes against ballpark Pride Nights, Murphy’s takeaway from a team meeting with league ambassador for inclusion Billy Bean was to “disagree with the fact that Billy is a homosexual.” He is not a Hall of Famer.

The last cut from my deserving-candidate list a year ago was Dustin Pedroia. My gut says that Pedroia belongs in Cooperstown, but the more I try to rationalize that the less confident I am. He was pesky at the plate but finished well shy of 2,000 hits. He was speedy but never stole 30 bases in a season. He played a terrific defensive second baseman in an era when that wasn’t distinctive. He was the face of some great Red Sox teams but wasn’t particularly impactful in those playoff runs (.687 OPS in 51 postseason games). The knee injury that effectively ended his career is the kind of romantically tragic what if? that captures fans’ imaginations, and a few more decent seasons would have bolstered his case, but by that point his relatively brief run of superstardom was already long behind him. Is the alternate timeline where he stays healthy that much more compelling than it is for, say, Grady Sizemore or Troy Tulowitzki? Still, it’s hard to say anyone else in this group had a better career than Pedroia did, and he just feels like a Hall of Famer. Does that count for anything?

I would love to make a contrarian case for Hunter Pence, an incredibly fun and fully unique player, to have a place in Cooperstown. Unfortunately I can’t think of what it could possibly be.

I’ll give Rick Porcello this: He won a Cy Young award, which is more than you can say for anyone else on the ballot save Félix Hernández. However, that was the only year when you could call him even a Top 25 pitcher in the game. His 4.40 career ERA was worse than league average after adjusting for the context in which he played, and is over a half-run above the next-highest on the ballot.3 I guess a vote for him could help shift the Overton window and make Buehrle and Pettitte look better by comparison.

Jimmy Rollins received 18 percent of the BBWAA vote last year, making him the best-performing candidate whom I previously omitted for reasons besides scandals or ballot space. As a Phillies fan I’d love to vote for Rollins, though I haven’t quite figured out how to get myself there. He was a good hitter for a shortstop yet ended up with a below-average OPS+ and wRC+. He was a strong defender who won four Gold Gloves, though he wasn’t regarded highly enough for his fielding to get him into Cooperstown. Six of Baseball-Reference’s nine most-similar players to Rollins are in the Hall, but even his closest statistical comp is fairly attenuated.4 He was the NL MVP in 2007, when he wasn’t the best player on his own team. He held on as a solid contributor for a while, and reaching nearly 2,500 hits is nothing to sneeze at in today’s game. Neither is stealing 470 bases. Is that enough to be the first line on a plaque? Carl Crawford stole 480. José Reyes swiped 517. Still, I’d be happy to see him get in, and this is the year to look for players like that.

Finally, we come to David Wright, whom I previously judged as just below the mark. In his prime, he was the face of baseball, both figuratively and officially. He had eight different seasons good enough to earn All-Star nods or MVP votes (including the year Rollins won, when Wright probably deserved it more) and went back-to-back in both Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers. His résumé feels light — he has fewer hits (1,777) and home runs (242) than Hunter Pence — and voters have notoriously tough standards for third basemen. Like Pedroia, his career was prematurely derailed by injuries (to his neck, shoulder, and spine). Given their established levels of play leading up to their respective maladies I would argue that an if he’d stayed healthy counterfactual is even more interesting for Wright than Pedroia. It’s a compelling narrative, though it’s still merely hypothetical.

If you’re keeping score at home, that gives us a total of 15 plausible candidates on this year’s ballot. Eight of my 10 votes already locked down, leaving two spots open for seven players: Edwin Encarnación, Gio González, Torii Hunter, Matt Kemp, Dustin Pedroia, Jimmy Rollins, and David Wright.

First I had trouble filling my ballot. Now I face the task of winnowing the field down.

My cases for three of the players above felt more obligatory than enthusiastic. González in service of loosening standards for pitchers, Hunter for his historic collection of hardware, and Kemp for enjoying what was contemporaneously seen as an all-time-great prime season. I am sincere in having reasoned myself into taking their candidacies seriously. But if I’m triaging my votes, they are the easiest cuts.

There are two more names whom I would enjoy voting for, but who in my heart of hearts I can’t say are Hall of Famers: Encarnación and Rollins. Turns out I don’t have room for them after all.

The two men left standing are close enough to the Cooperstown standard that I’d be proud to vote for them. Coincidentally, they are also the names from this group whom I am most confident will get in eventually someday. As Sam Miller would say, I’d rather help them than slow them down.

Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb were the first two hitters to ever do it. They were joined by Babe Ruth a generation later. You may recognize this trio as literal-first-ballot Hall of Famers, who alongside pitchers Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson represented the inaugural class elected into Cooperstown in 1936. So far, so good. Fellow legends Lou Gehrig, Charlie Gehringer, and Rogers Hornsby were the only other position players to achieve it in the pre-integration era. The next two were Willie Mays and Henry Aaron, which does nothing to dissuade me from the usefulness of these criteria. Then came a pair of consensus all-time greats, Joe Morgan and Wade Boggs. Within my lifetime the group has expanded to include Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, and Mike Trout, who have collectively dominated the league landscape for most of the 21st century.

If I told you that these were the 13 best position players of all time, you might look at me a little funny, but you’d concede that we’re at least in the right ballpark. And most of the glaring omissions came awfully close to meeting this bar. Ted Williams, who missed three seasons in his prime while serving in World War II, joins the club if we go by seasons played in instead of calendar years. Round a single six-and-a-half-win season up to seven and you add in Eddie Collins, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Schmidt, and Tris Speaker. If you were making a list of the best hitters in MLB history, this group is more or less where you’d start.

The final member of this elite club is Chase Utley.

By these objective (if contrived) criteria, Utley’s production from 2005 to 2009 ranks among the best extended stretches of performance in the history of the game. Over that five-year run he hit 301/.388/.535, averaging 29 homers, 73 extra-base hits, and 101 RBI per season alongside his signature strong defense and smart baserunning. He earned downballot MVP consideration in all five years and was named both an All-Star and a Silver Slugger in four. His 38.4 fWAR in that span trailed only Pujols (in the midst of a seven-win-season streak of his own) for the most in baseball.

Yet at the onset of his third go-round as a Cooperstown candidate, Utley has had trouble consolidating support. Just the fact that he is still on the ballot may be surprising — with comparables like the legends listed above, you’d think the voters would have waved him in as soon as he was eligible. But only 29 percent of the Baseball Writers Association of America electorate checked his box on the 2024 ballot, and even a modest jump in 2025 (to 40 percent) left him well below a majority, let alone the 75 percent threshold for induction.

The case against Utley is simple: critics would say he was not good enough for long enough to meet the Cooperstown standard. The latter point is fair. He had at most six more legitimately good seasons, so he was a true first-division player for barely a decade. Only one honoree in my adult life (Dick Allen) has been inducted as a position player with fewer hits than Utley’s 1,885. The BBWAA has not elected a batter with fewer than 2,000 hits through the normal election process since Roy Campanella in 1969. But career bulk is not a prerequisite for the Hall — Sandy Koufax got in on his first ballot.1 Voters would accept a relatively short career for a player with a sufficiently high peak.

I would argue that Utley’s prime was so excellent that he would deserve a place in Cooperstown no matter what the rest of his career was like. The problem is that the voters don’t seem to realize just how good he was. I have a few theories about why. He lacked a singular exceptional skill, and the parts of the game he was best at — getting on base, extra-base power, infield range, smart-over-speedy baserunning — were not quantified as readily or valued as highly 20 years ago as they are now. He got somewhat lost among his star-studded lineups, with teammates Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins winning MVP awards from both ahead of and behind him in the batting order. And like Bartolo Colón, he redefined his image so thoroughly in the denouement of his career that I suspect people think of him first as a wily veteran, not the premier second baseman of his generation. Would he be remembered more reverently if he had retired a few years earlier?

It occurred to me that Utley’s greatness would be more salient if he had earned more contemporaneous recognition. So I started digging through the National League’s annual awards in search of hardware that Utley should have won, in hopes of retconning some additional accolades for his résumé.

Chase (I feel like I can call him Chase) received two types of major honors multiple times. He was named to six All-Star teams and won four Silver Sluggers — an impressive collection of feats, though it’s unlikely to be a convincing rebuttal to detractors who would relegate him to the figurative Hall of Very Good. You can go through the seasonal leaderboards looking for additional years when he should have been honored, and I have.2 He wasn’t snubbed enough times to move the needle.

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My main goal was to find a year when he should have won a Most Valuable Player award. It’s fair to say that the voters underestimated Utley, who ranked among the NL’s top five in WAR each year from 2005 to 2009, yet never finished higher than seventh in the MVP voting. But Utley made a crucial error that prevents me from retconning him a trophy: his peak fully overlapped with Pujols’, and therefore there was never a time when you could confidently point to him as the best player in the NL. Utley probably deserved the 2006 and 2007 trophies more than Howard and Rollins did, and depending on your preferred flavor of WAR you could call the 2008 and 2009 races effective ties between him and Pujols and surmise that Utley should have won one of them. Certainly the fact that not a single BBWAA voter ever ranked him first or second on their respective MVP ballots is an injustice. Still, it’s hard to say Utley was robbed of the honor when his main competition was The Machine.

But there’s one type of award missing from Utley’s mantle that stands out, both because I’m certain he would have won multiple times in an era when advanced metrics were more normalized, and because I’m convinced that his doing so would have changed the narrative around his Cooperstown candidacy: Gold Gloves.

Over the next few paragraphs, we’re going to spend some time with two metrics that don’t hold much purchase in modern player evaluation: Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) and Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR). Today these second-generation sabermetric defensive models, which predate the advent of modern Statcast tracking data, have no real constituency. Old-school baseball folks have long been skeptical of black-box formulae purporting to turn a concept abstract as defensive value into a concrete estimate of runs saved. Proponents of analytics would tell you that the margins of error are too high to be confident in the results, as evidenced by how often the two similar models disagreed with each other, and how wildly players’ ratings fluctuated from year to year.

Yet these metrics are at least reasonably correlated with popular perceptions of fielding skill, and for the pre-Statcast era they are likely the most-accurate estimates of defensive value the general public will ever see. Most importantly, right after Utley’s prime defensive years, these metrics gained an explicit role in the Gold Glove-selection process. Since 2013, not only have Gold Glove voters received a packet of sabermetric fielding stats alongside their ballots, but the Society for American Baseball Research Defensive Index is included as an input alongside the coaches’ votes, like a Bayesian prior weighed against the actual ballots.

And these models rated Utley very favorably. His +90.1 UZR leads all second basemen since tracking began in 2002. He ranks second in DRS (+125), but is much closer to first place (Mark Ellis, +130) than third (Orlando Hudson, +101), and would take the top spot if not for a specific relative weakness at turning double plays. His good range and sure hands were augmented by keen positioning. In an age before coaching staffs micromanaged fielders’ placements in accordance with batted-ball data, and when defensive metrics struggled to discern positioning from range — longtime sabermetricians may recall how Brett Lawrie and the Blue Jays’ shifts broke DRS — his baseball-rat penchant for shading towards where balls were more likely to be hit made him an analytics darling at the keystone.

In short, Utley’s defensive peak occurred in a very specific era in which the best available data painted him in the best possible light, but the coaches around the league whose votes determined the Gold Glove awardees presumably did not notice.

How many Gold Gloves would Utley have won if the voters had been looking at what were then considered state-of-the-art defensive metrics? To be clear, I am not interested in relitigating who should have won by making overconfident assertions from outmoded tracking data. I am merely peeking into a not-so-farfetched alternate universe where the player-evaluation standards that were popularized by the end of Utley’s career had been commonplace at the beginning of it, too.

Let’s go year by year. As a rookie in 2003, Utley did not play enough (37 games) nor well enough (+1 DRS, -0.2 UZR) at second base to merit real consideration.3 In 2004 you could have made a contrarian case for him, as he led all National League second basemen with at least as many innings in both metrics on a prorated basis. But given his limited track record and the large sample size required for these models to stabilize, you wouldn’t have gotten much traction.

The next season is when things start to get interesting. Utley led all NL second basemen with +15.5 UZR in 2005. He ranked just third in DRS (+20), trailing Craig Counsell by 10 runs. If you take the average of the two metrics, Counsell came out slightly ahead. Going by ordinal rankings, Counsell placed fifth in UZR, so you could conclude that the models had more collective confidence in Utley’s greatness. Both metrics put Utley ahead of the actual winner, Luis Castillo, who took home the trophy for the third year in a row. Again, this does not mean Castillo was the wrong choice, just that a decade later it probably would have gone to someone else — either Counsell or Utley. We’ll call this one a maybe for Utley’s résumé.

On to 2006. Based on the defensive metrics, there were three reasonable candidates for the Gold Glove that year: Utley, Jamey Carroll, and José Valentín. Utley tied with Carroll for the league lead in DRS (+18), and trailed them both in UZR (+7.5). However, Carroll and Valentín were merely part-time players at the keystone, making just 94 and 109 appearances at second base, respectively. An optimist could say that their accumulating so much defensive value in partial seasons is extra impressive. A skeptic would note that fielding metrics are less reliable in smaller sample sizes, and that award-voters strongly prefer players who play (close to) the whole year. Utley led the NL’s true everyday second basemen in both measurements, with a clear edge over real-life winner Orlando Hudson (+13 DRS, -5.3 UZR). In this parallel universe, I am certain that this would have been Utley’s first Gold Glove. (Unless he had also previously won in 2004.)

Repeating in 2007 would have been possible, but not assured. Utley again tied for the NL lead in DRS (+18), this time with Hudson. In our timeline, Hudson won for the second year in a row, though the disparity in UZR between him (-2.1) and Utley (+12.5) would have made for an easy tiebreaker. But the crowded field also featured breakout years from Brandon Phillips (+9 DRS, +17.0 UZR while playing 24 more games than Utley) and Kazuo Matsui (+14 DRS, +11.5 UZR in just 102 appearances). I would lean slightly towards Phillips, but it’s a tossup. This is another maybe.

Both metrics agree that 2008 was Utley’s finest defensive season. His +30 DRS was the best in all of baseball (at any position, not just second base) and his +19.3 UZR led all infielders in either league. With apologies to Phillips, who took home the trophy after another strong showing, this is the second year when Utley clearly would have won.

In 2009, Utley’s primary competition from an analytics perspective was Clint Barmes. Barmes had a slight edge in DRS (+13 to +12) but Utley doubled Barmes’ UZR (+11.0 to +5.6). The real winner, Hudson, was not close in either. Advantage: Utley. A year later he was clearly at the top of the leaderboards in both categories, with the actual honoree (Phillips) in second place in each. That’s two more seasons in which a more analytics-oriented electorate would have given Utley the hardware.

Utley would have been in the mix one last time in 2011, when he put up an impressive +7 DRS and +9.2 UZR in just 100 games at second base. He may not have been favored to usurp the award from Phillips, who earned similar ratings in a full season. Though that implies Utley was a better defender pro rata, and that argument would have been more convincing now that he was a multiple-time winner than it was in 2004. This is our final maybe.

If you’re keeping score at home, we have retconned Utley has having won at least four Gold Gloves, and possibly as many as seven. Even on the conservative end, winning four Gold Gloves as a middle infielder would put him in rarified air with just 21 other players in MLB history.4 He would rank on par with such luminaries as Craig Biggio, Bobby Grich, Andrelton Simmons, Alan Trammell, and (most fittingly) his longtime double-play-mate Jimmy Rollins. He would be the equal of Mark Buehrle, Eric Hosmer, Kevin Kiermaier, and Kenny Lofton, all contemporaries of Utley who were considered the best at their respective positions in their day.

It’s fair to further expect Utley to have won in at least one of his three maybe years, bringing his total to five Gold Gloves. At that point he joins the company of Adrian Beltré, Dave Concepción, Dale Murphy, Ron Santo, and even the great Joe Morgan. If you flip one more season — an optimistic assumption, but clearly a plausible one — then Utley would become just the ninth middle infielder in baseball history to win six Gold Gloves. The others: Roberto Alomar, Luis Aparicio, Mark Belanger, Bill Mazeroski, Ryne Sandberg, Ozzie Smith, Omar Vizquel, and Frank White.

Granting Utley a cabinet full of Gold Gloves would completely change the narrative of his Cooperstown candidacy. No longer would the case for Chase start with he was a solid all-around player, or people don’t realize how good he was. Instead you could lead with something like he was one of the best fielders of his generation, and he was also a really good hitter. (Aparicio, Mazeroski, and Smith are all in the Hall with OPSes in the mid-.600s; Utley’s career OPS is .823.) Or he was an anchor of one of the most-iconic lineups of the 21st century, and also he won [four/five/six/seven] Gold Gloves. I suspect these framings would be more convincing, especially since they would redirect voters’ focus towards his exceptional prime.

We already know that the man can give a celebratory speech. If the voters consider how many Gold Gloves Utley so plausibly could have — and probably should have — won, maybe he’ll have occasion for another oration in Cooperstown next summer.

Jeff Sullivan’s framing of what followed still sticks in my head a decade later. Say Satan were trying to get into baseball, and offered to spare your soul if you could show him what makes the game special in under an hour. Until that game, Sullivan posited, there was no clear right way to do it. But now you could just put on the seventh inning: the deflected throw back to the mound, the comedy of errors to load the bases, the most-iconic bat flip in the history of the game. “When it’s done, and the second bench-clearing incident is broken up,” he wrote, “you’ve got six minutes to take questions.”

I don’t recall when exactly I apologized to my friend and informed him that what was happening on the screen was too important to ignore. But I do remember that, by the time the stadium started rocking so hard that even the camera feed was shaking, my skeptical companion understood that he was witnessing something special.

The end of the 2025 MLB season felt like the baseball gods had stretched those six outs at Rogers Centre a decade prior into a full 11-inning game.

World Series Game Sevens (or is it Games Seven?) are definitionally high-stakes affairs. No matter what happens, the season ends that night. One team flies a championship banner forever. The other goes home to spend the next few months smarting over how close they came. Both sides leave it all out on the field. No one’s worried about saving their pitching staffs’ arms for tomorrow, because there is no tomorrow.

This pitching matchup alone made this Game Seven particularly special. In one corner was Max Scherzer, one of the greatest arms of his generation who was rumored to be considering retirement after the season, and who had just become the first pitcher in MLB history to start a postseason game for six different teams. His opponent was the best player in baseball, Shohei Ohtani, starting on three days’ rest — only his second time ever pitching on fewer than five days’ rest in an MLB game — seeking to add another Herculean feat to his lengthy list of precedent-shattering achievements.

Both Dave Roberts and John Schneider leaned into the spectacle, managing their pitching staffs as though winning were secondary to establishing compelling storylines for an eventual episode of 30 for 30. My research suggests that modern managers are generally too quick to pull their starters. But in a do-or-die game where the plan was to go to the bullpen early and no one on the staff was off-limits, having Ohtani face the top of the Blue Jays’ dangerous order a second time when he visibly wasn’t at his best felt more like attempted mythmaking than a reasoned strategy. Ditto for letting Scherzer, who had an 8.07 ERA over the previous two months and was left off Toronto’s roster altogether in the ALDS, pitch into the fifth. In the heat of Game Seven you use whatever pitcher you think gives you the best chance even if it’s not an ideal situation, but starters are accustomed to a certain routine, and before this weekend neither Shane Bieber nor Blake Snell had pitched out of the bullpen since 2019. Tyler Glasnow had thrown on back-to-back days exactly once in his MLB career, in 2018, before he came on in relief in both Games Six and Seven.

Then there’s Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Not only had he never pitched out of the bullpen since coming over from the Nippon Professional League (let alone with runners already on base) before he closed out the championship for the Dodgers and won World Series MVP honors on Saturday, but he did so after throwing six innings the night before — despite having never appeared on fewer than five days’ rest in his MLB career. Genius or madness? It worked out.

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Not that the game would otherwise have been devoid of drama. Toronto objected to how much time Ohtani took to warm up between innings. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and George Springer both thought the final pitch Guerrero saw in his first-inning at-bat was a ball, which led to a strike-’em-out-throw-’em-out double play (when Springer thought Guerrero had walked and stopped running before reaching second base) and therefore would have been one of the most consequential blown pitch calls in MLB history had it in fact not been in the strike zone. The benches cleared in the fourth inning after Andrés Giménez first tried to lean into a pitch, then actually got beaned. And for a fleeting moment it looked like the season might end on a walkoff replay review before the crew confirmed that Isaiah Kiner-Falefa was out at the plate on Miguel Rojas’ game-saving ninth-inning throw.

And yet, as in all the best games in any sport, the most-memorable moments came from what the players did on the field.

Bo Bichette suffered a knee injury in September and missed the Blue Jays’ first two postseason series. He joined the World Series roster having not appeared in a game in a month and half, and was initially available as only a part-time player. In the third inning, Ohtani intentionally walked Guerrero — to whom Bichette has been linked since their prospect days, as they were paired in fans’ minds as talented teammates with famous fathers — to face the hobbled slugger. Bichette stepped in against the best player in the world and fulfilled the dream of every hitter who’s ever been told, via an intentional walk to the previous batter, that the pitcher wasn’t afraid of them.

Yet Bichette’s was not the home run history will most remember. In the top of the ninth, with Toronto two outs away from a championship, Miguel Rojas stepped to the plate against Jeff Hoffman. Rojas was the Los Angeles’ utility infielder and started only four of their 17 postseason games. Fans were shocked that the Dodgers didn’t pinch hit for the light-hitting Rojas in such a crucial spot. But Dave Roberts knows a thing or two about role players playing the hero in big games. And Rojas tied the game with one of the most-stunning swings in the history of the sport.

In a game full of web gems — the Jays would have lost long before the 11th inning if not for the defensive heroics of Guerrero and Daulton Varsho — the one fans are talking about most also came from Rojas. With the game tied and the bases loaded with one out in the ninth, Rojas snagged a grounder off Varsho’s bat and somehow willed the ball home, his off-balance throw just beating Kiner-Falefa’s (questionable) slide at the plate and saving the Dodgers’ season.

But the most-jawdropping play of the game — nay, the season — came a pitch later. Andy Pages was the Dodgers’ starting center fielder for most of the year, but he and his 4-for-50 playoff batting line found themselves benched for Game Seven. He entered the game in the ninth as a rare mid-inning defensive replacement. Five pitches later, Ernie Clement hit a deep fly ball to left-center, well behind where both Pages and left fielder Kiké Hernández were positioned. The ball appeared to sail over Hernández’ head for a World Series walkoff. Until Pages barreled onscreen, running through both 121 feet of turf and Hernández to make the leaping catch to send the game to extras.

If this were a sleepy midweek matchup between two cellar-dwelling teams in June, it would be in the conversation for the best play of the year. Pages did it with the bases loaded, two outs, and the score tied in the bottom of the ninth of Game Seven of the World Series. And this game was so bananas that it almost felt like an afterthought in the postgame coverage.

The game’s eventual ending in the 11th inning was a rushed denouement, as Alejandro Kirk’s weak grounder turned into a championship-clinching double play for the Dodgers so quickly that it was hard to register it in real time. But this game had already made history one batter earlier, when Addison Barger stepped up with a runner on third and one out and the Blue Jays down by a run. Yamamoto’s first delivery was a Golden Pitch: a chance for Barger to end the game in a championship for either the Dodgers (if he hit into a double play) or the Blue Jays (if he hit a home run). This was just the ninth game in MLB history in which a single swing could have determined the World Series in either direction.

Maybe the best way to sum up how exciting this game was is this: Among MLB.com’s postgame coverage, a team of writers compiled a ranked list of the game’s biggest plays. Will Smith’s tiebreaking 11th-inning home run that won the World Series for the Dodgers — the sort of thing normally that would be the singular defining moment of the whole postseason — didn’t crack the top five.

Or maybe it’s that the chaotic 18-inning marathon that was Game Three somehow turned out not to be the highlight of the series.

Or maybe it’s that I’m nearly 1,700 words into writing about this game and it hasn’t occurred to me to mention the final score.

When someone tells me they don’t understand my passion for cheesesteaks, follow-up questions usually reveal that they haven’t tried a good one. Either they’ve never been to Philadelphia and don’t realize that cheesesteaks elsewhere truly are not the same, or their only experience was at the tourist traps of Pat’s and Geno’s. If I had a dollar for every skeptic whose face has lit up (from both happiness and fluorescent cheese product) when I took them for a legit steak — well, I could certainly buy you lunch.

Game Seven of the 2025 World Series is the baseball equivalent of a whiz with at Tony & Nick’s. It’s what you would show a demon if you had a full game to win him over to save your soul.

If you could watch those last few innings and not feel your heart soar or fall with every swing, then fine: I will never be able to convince you that baseball isn’t boring. But based on how many people I’ve heard from in the last couple days who found themselves drawn in by one of the best games of all time, I’d take my chances. “I now understand the love of baseball,” one relative told me. “Remember when I was looking for a team?” asked another who had tuned into the Blue Jays’ run in hopes of rekindling his dormant passion for the game. “Well I’ve got one now!” From total strangers, too: “Even though I find baseball exceedingly dull,” someone replied to me on social media, “I was glued to the TV.”

For my entire adult life, baseball people have wrung their hands about regrowing the sport’s popularity. They’ve tried rule changes, some of which have improved the game, and some of which haven’t. They’ve tried new ways to showcase the league’s stars. They’ve tried hiring broadcasters who constantly complain about how much better baseball used to be on national TV. (Oddly, this one hasn’t worked.) Yet what this World Series makes clear is that the best selling point for the sport is the game itself, what Dick Cramer called a “soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking,” the distinct blend of chess and athletic prowess that unfolded before our eyes while a curmudgeonly commentator bemoaned that teams don’t bunt as much anymore.

Seven months ago, while swept up in the ubiquitous optimism of Opening Day, I recounted one of my saddest childhood memories: playing for a coach who did his darnedest to suck the joy of baseball out of his roster of nine-year-olds. As an alternative to the Coach Kevins of the world, and in the spirit of the time of year when the first pop of a ball in a mitt fills so many hearts with joy, I proposed a mission statement for baseball fans: “To maintain this magical feeling for as long as possible.” With apologies to Toronto fans, by sending us into the offseason with an exhilarating instant-classic Game Seven, the Dodgers and Blue Jays have done just that.

Pitchers and catchers report in 100 days.

Every fanbase imagines their experience to be uniquely tortuous. No one else understands the pain of blowing that game, of trading away that player, of that missed call that everyone in the stadium could see except the ref. I’m sure even fans of the Golden State Warriors and Real Madrid would tell you they have it rough; a friend who grew up a Boston fan once told me with a straight face that the mid-to-late aughts were a hard time to root for the Red Sox. In my experience, the surest way to shut other people up about their own sports misfortunes is to reveal that I root for the Cleveland Browns.

There are many points in recent years when I could have, and probably should have, turned in my fan card. There was the infamous 0-16 season in 2017, the nadir of a dramatic and ultimately failed tanking process. There was the drama of 2021, when team brass threw the best quarterback they’ve had since the franchise’s reincarnation under the bus while he played through injuries — after leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a second straight division title, it’s becoming increasingly hard to accept that Baker Mayfield was the problem with that roster — and from last year, when the front office was so committed to the glaringly mediocre signal-caller they’d overpaid for that they intentionally downgraded their roster by letting his popular backup walk so there would be no competition for the starting job.

Worst of all was 2022, when they traded for Deshaun Watson, who has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by at least 30 women, and signed him to a record-breaking $230 million contract. This would have been appalling enough as a grotesque compromise of moral decency even if it weren’t the most-boneheaded deal in the history of professional sports, and vice versa. I ultimately decided that rooting for another team to beat them on the field felt like a triflingly small response to their condoning sexual assault, but suffice to say I have not felt proud to be a Browns fan since that day. (Not that that happened very often before anyway.)

Yet each preceding pathetic season at the Factory of Sadness featured something that’s missing as we await this year’s first Browns kickoff: a reason for hope.

When I first started following the NFL in earnest, around 2014, it was the dawn of the Johnny Manziel era. I remember watching the trick play where he pretended to argue with a coach on the sideline. If Johnny Football had enough self-awareness to use his diva reputation as a strategic diversion, I thought, maybe he had the temperament to succeed in the pros after all.

When Paul DePodesta, who was then one of my idols for his trailblazing work in baseball, took the reins in 2016, the Browns kept losing. In fact, they lost more than ever before: they went 1-31 in DePodesta’s first two years at the helm. But at least there was some intentionality behind the ineptitude. The vision he outlined combined unapologetic tanking with an aggressive investment in analytics, allegedly setting the Browns up for a spate of high draft picks selected by a world-class team of next-generation player evaluators. At least this time sucking was part of the plan.

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No one expected the young core to click instantly, so another sub-.500 season was still a win in 2018 when the Browns took home Rookie of the Week honors 11 times in one year. A step back in 2019? Well, growing pains are part of the process. An early playoff exit in 2020? That one was on the refs, and just making it to the second round meant it was the most-successful Browns season I’d ever seen. The wheels coming off in 2021? Disappointing, but we were still coasting off the good vibes from the first postseason win of my living memory.

Then came the Watson trade. No, I did not want that person on my team, and yes, Cleveland cashing in all their chips for a quarterback facing a lengthy suspension was an odd fit for a team that was in win-now mode. But in 2022 we were told that Deshaun Watson was the kind of star who could lead this roster to the promised land once he got on the field. Then in 2023, the line went that you couldn’t judge Watson by a single subpar partial season. And we made the playoffs!…thanks to a backup quarterback who signed off his couch at midseason and filled in for Watson after he first sucked and then got hurt. By 2024, it was apparent that our QB1 was one of the worst QBs in the NFL, but at least we had recent precedent for scraping together a hot streak in spite of the albatross under center.

As the grass is mown at Huntington Bank Field ahead of the Browns’ 2025 opener, I’m struggling to articulate a similar reason to care about their upcoming season.

No one thinks the Browns will play well. Vegas expects Cleveland to go something like 5-12 this year. If that happens, their combined eight wins between this and last season would be their fewest in this millennium for a two-year stretch in which they were not overtly tanking. You can find them near the bottom of every list of power rankings and Super Bowl odds. I have yet to see a single prognosticator project them to finish higher than last place in the AFC North.

Looking at preseason single-game spreads, the Browns were favorites in nine of their 17 games last season. From 2019-23, they were initial favorites in somewhere between 10 and 13 of their matchups each year. In 2017, coming off a 1-15 season and on the precipice of going 0-16, the initial spreads favored them in two games. This year, the Browns are measly 1.5-point favorites for one single matchup: Week 14, at home against the Tennessee Titans.

There will be some addition by subtraction in the quarterback room, with Watson presumed to be out for the year with a torn Achilles tendon. Starting under center this weekend is Joe Flacco, whose return to Cleveland is the football equivalent of Robert Downey Jr. coming back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: he may be the best casting for Doctor Doom given the current state of the franchise, but that’s an indictment of the (lack of) vision that led us here. Especially when Flacco described the internal QB competition as neither “ideal” nor “the best thing for myself.” And especially since it underscores the folly of declining to re-sign him in the first place a year ago.

Behind Flacco are two rookie QBs, Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders. In other circumstances this would be exciting, though Cleveland fans surely know not to get their hopes up over new quarterbacks. Franchise QBs don’t often come from the late third round, where the Browns drafted Gabriel, nor the fifth, where they picked Sanders. The likelihood of either making a splash for Cleveland this year depends on how much you trust this front office (who traded for Watson, ran Mayfield out of town, and chose Jameis Winston over Flacco) to evaluate quarterbacks, and this head coach (who failed to build successful offensive scheme around two separate ostensible franchise QBs) to help them develop. And they may not have much runway to prove themselves, given the considerable smoke that the Browns are already planning to take a new signal-caller in next year’s draft.

There’s no sign of this changing anytime soon. In an organization that had previously averaged a high-profile firing a year for over two decades, head coach Kevin Stefanski and GM Andrew Berry are somehow entering their sixth seasons on the job. Stefanski has a .414 winning percentage over his last 70 games while overseeing more-talented rosters than the one he has now. He has repeatedly shown himself to be an inept leader of the clubhouse, and his players hold him in lower esteem than any other still-employed head coach in the NFL.

Meanwhile, Berry’s legacy is inextricably tied to the Watson deal; no amount of shrewd draft-pick shuffling can outweigh his shelling out three years of first-round picks, $230 million, and the organization’s soul for a player so awful (on and off the field) that their own paying fans reveled in his injury. Even the kindest read of Berry’s tenure, in which one assumes that the Browns’ most-consequential decisions have been made by the meddlesome owners over his objections, is not flattering. Together he and Stefanski inherited a young core strong enough to make the playoffs in their first season at the helm — and have watched it all go down the drain.

And somewhere behind the curtain, Paul DePodesta is closing in on a decade in his nebulous yet influential role as the team’s chief strategy officer. The architect of the botched tank is now overseeing a rebuild for the second time — a rare feat for a front-office leader, and one that suggests he may possess the greatest job security of any employee in professional sports.

What are the Browns playing for? The team is going nowhere this year, they have no apparent path to turn things around, and the Haslams seem perfectly content to let the leadership team who steered the franchise into this rut keep digging a deeper hole. Even the trite rebuilding-year boilerplate let’s see how the young kids do! is a tough sell when the two biggest rookie storylines are pitting a pair of freshly drafted quarterbacks against each other (and benching them both), and second-rounder Quinshon Judkins being charged with domestic violence while he holds out for a guaranteed contract.

Odds are, this won’t be the worst season in the Browns’ miserable history. It won’t even be their biggest humiliation of the last decade. But finding an angle to be optimistic about this team is harder than it’s ever been in my adult life, and perhaps since football returned to northeast Ohio. To steal a phrase from Charles Schulz: Of all the Cleveland Browns in the world, this year’s team is the Cleveland Browniest.

So popular was the swing-off that there is (early, speculative, trial-balloon-esque) discussion about implementing the sudden-death swing-off in the regular season, too. And since the current extra-innings rules (in which each team starts each frame with a Manfred Man on second base) mean that both inauthenticity and undermining the league's stated desire to reinforce the value of starting pitchers are already sunk costs, the idea has grown on me. If adherence to the long-established rhythm of how runs are scored is no longer the first principle, then we may as well make MLB’s overtime structure as entertaining as possible.1

It isn’t going to happen. Not anytime soon, anyway. The Commissioner’s Office usually telegraphs such rule changes years before they are implemented. Removing the veneer of authenticity from extra innings would be a particularly tough sell, even if it’s now a question of degrees more than principle.

But what if it did?

The other day, a friend posed one of the best sports hypotheticals I’ve heard in a long time: In a world where the swing-off fully replaced extra innings, how valuable would the best overtime-homer-hitter be?2 Once I started chewing on the question, my mind wouldn’t let it rest. I’ve been tossing and turning at night, arguing with myself about whether or not a team would rush out to sign someone like Joey Gallo, who has prodigious power but makes unplayably infrequent contact, as a swing-off ringer.3 So I decided to try to figure it out.

The first question in developing a framework for swing-off value sounds basic but requires some thought: What are the odds that a good hitter who’s trying to hit a homer will hit a lobbed pitch over the fence? The answer is probably lower than you think. It feels like Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani could do it on command. But if you watch a big-leaguer take batting practice, you’ll see a number of towering fly balls die well short of the warning track. (Which then makes you appreciate how hard their job is when the pitcher is trying to get them out.)

There are two recent datasets for estimating how frequently a batter will homer in what is essentially a competitive-BP setting. The first was the All-Star Game swing-off itself. In the prototype demo for these potential new rules, the five participating players combined to swat seven dingers over 15 swings.

The second was the Home Run Derby the night before. The main portion of each round, in which the goal is to hit as many homers as you can within three minutes or 40 pitches (so players are incentivized to swing at suboptimal pitches), was fundamentally different than the swing-off, where hitters have unlimited time and pitches but must be choosy with their cuts. However, the outs-based bonus period, adapting the pre-2015 Derby format in which contestants were limited solely by the number of non-homer hacks they take, presented an effectively identical challenge: swing at only the pitches you are most confident that you can clobber. Boxscore-like data for the Derby proved surprisingly difficult to find, so I rewatched each bonus round and counted 30 total taters on a combined 78 swings.

Combine this year’s All-Star Game and Derby data and you get 37 homers on 93 hacks, for a dinger-per-swing rate — which I will henceforth refer to as “dinger rate” — of 40 percent. It turns out this is a stable baseline. From 2005 to 2014, the last 10 years in which the Derby was out- instead of time-based, the dinger rate held steady between 35 and 44 percent.

Is a 40 percent dinger rate a fair assumption for swing-offs? A skeptic could say that the baseline from the Home Run Derby, featuring eight of the top sluggers from around the league, is too lofty an expectation for a regular-season swing-off, where participation would expand to the third-best power hitter on each team. On the other hand, stars who sit out the annual skills contest (at least eight hitters are known to have declined invites this year, including Judge and Ohtani4) would presumably participate if an actual game were on the line. Hitters would also be fresher over the course of three swings than while taking dozens of hacks in quick succession (as in the Derby), and could train for it more consistently throughout the season. The fact that you can argue the benchmark from both sides, along with its consistency as an equilibrium point over time, tells me we are in the right ballpark (pun fully intended).

Using 40 percent as our baseline, I set out to model the impact of a single player’s dinger rate on their team’s odds of winning a swing-off. I wrote some quick derby-simulation code that assumed five of the six participants had 40 percent odds of homering on each of their three respective swings, while the sixth contestant’s chances could vary. For each integer value p between 0 and 100, I ran 100,000 swing-off simulations where the final batter had a dinger rate of p percent. If the teams tied after nine swings, our variable player took the subsequent sudden-death round(s) when they were an above-average slugger (p > 40), and a teammate stepped in otherwise.

Here’s how the team’s winning percentage varies along with a single contestant’s skill:

When one of a team’s three swing-off contestants was physically incapable of hitting the ball over the fence (p = 0), they won 27 percent of the time. After nine swings they were behind in 64 percent of simulations, ahead in 19 percent, and tied in 17 percent (which became coin-flips as two assumed-average hitters faced off until they reached a decisive result). By contrast, if a hitter were guaranteed to homer on every swing (p = 100), they would lead their team to victory in 89 percent of mini-derbies. They won outright in 75 percent of simulations, lost in just 11 percent, and went to additional rounds in 14 percent (in which case the invincible contestant always eventually came out on top). You may note that the line gets a little steeper just past the 40 percent baseline. That’s the impact of having an above-average contestant in both the initial round and potential tiebreakers.

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Over the last two seasons (after the schedule disruptions from COVID and the lockout subsided), nine percent of MLB games went to extra innings, so teams averaged about 14 end-of-regulation ties per year. At that frequency, the absolute maximum range for the expected impact of swing-off skill — the 62-point gap in win expectancy between me and Sylvester Coddmeyer III — is 8.6 wins per year. For those not versed in contemporary player-evaluation methods, that is enormous. Most years, a hitter who was worth more than eight wins would be a frontrunner for the MVP.

Yet that exaggerates the realistic range of skills at a team’s disposal. There is no Homer Simpson with his Wonderbat whom you can count on to go yard on every swing, and no manager would be short-handed enough to tap Homer Simpson without his Wonderbat for a sudden-death mini-derby. To come up with a less-reductive answer, we must estimate a more-plausible distribution of leaguewide dinger rates.

Returning to the historical Home Run Derby data, Bobby Abreu’s 41 big flies in 2005 were the record under the previous, outs-based rules. He homered on 58 percent of his swings. The highest dinger rate in a night was Josh Hamilton’s 59 percent in 2008. From those observed maxima I would infer that the plausible sustainable upper limit for taters per swing is around 60 percent.

Based on the simulations above, inserting a slugger who goes yard on 60 percent of their hacks into an otherwise-average swing-off raises their team’s win probability from 50 percent to 66 percent. Given a typical number of would-be extra-inning games, this would peg the value of the best swing-off hitter in baseball at 2.2 wins above average per year.

That isn’t quite the final answer. A core tenet of modern sports analysis is that average is often the wrong comparison point. Everyday players don’t grow on trees. A full season’s worth of league-average production is a very valuable use of a roster spot. Rather, the relevant benchmark is how much better a given player is than whoever would take the team’s third swing-off spot if a vacancy arose.

It’s an especially interesting consideration here, where the average swing-off participant would be better than the average MLB hitter. In most cases, “replacement level” — the common (if impolitic from a labor-relations perspective) term for the performance you’d expect from a short-notice substitute — is equivalent to a waiver claim or Triple-A call-up. Here the replacement level would be defined by the fourth-best BP hitter on each team. A replacement-level slugger in the swing-off context could paradoxically still be expected to have above-average power.

At this point we can triangulate a rough estimated distribution of swing-off value given how the bell curves for other MLB skills are shaped. Unintentionally but very conveniently, the benchmarks we have already established map linearly to the 20-80 scale, a grading system common among baseball scouts in which 50 is the Major League average and 10 points of difference correspond to one standard deviation of skill. If a 60 percent dinger rate indicated a generation-defining talent (scouting grade: 80), 40 percent were the sign of an All-Star candidate (60), and a player who had zero chance of clearing the wall represented the lower limit for a plausible MLB player’s skill (20), that implies that the expected swing-off dinger rate for league-average hitters (50) is around 30 percent.

Given that estimated distribution of BP prowess and assuming that the typical backup derby contestant would have somewhere between average and plus raw power (a 55 on the scouting scale), we can calculate a replacement-level dinger rate of 35 percent, and a 47 percent chance of such a player’s team winning a swing-off if all the other hitters involved were average. That’s a 19-point difference in simulated win probability between a top-of-the-scale slugger and their likely backup. Translating that to WAR terms means we could reasonably expect the best swing-off hitter in baseball to be worth 2.6 wins a season beyond what they contributed during the actual games, for which the free-agent value (based on the commonly assumed price of $8 million per win) would be around $21 million a year.

With the crucial caveat that WAR is often described as an ill-fitting framework for evaluating relievers: the range of outcomes for swing-off sluggers would be similar to that of MLB bullpen arms, with the best derby ringer in the league contributing about as much WAR value as an elite closer.

As the initial shock from the major sport with the strongest commitment to consistent gameflow declaring that hundreds of matchups per year would end in a gimmick wore off, the baseball metagame would evolve quickly. Starting pitching would be further deemphasized, as capping the innings a team may need to cover at nine would give managers free rein to go to their bullpens even earlier. That, like banning the shift, would make strikeout rates go up. So would giving teams even more incentive to prioritize power over contact skill in evaluating players. Routine pregame BP would both feel more important as training for the swing-offs and be tracked more closely as tryouts for the tiebreakers. And as has happened lately for highly reputed managers and front-office leaders, the coaches who throw the best BP might become hot commodities around the league.

But the biggest change would be creating a new dimension for players to create value. A league-average player will be worth around two wins above replacement over 162 games. A hitter who’s merely sufficiently good at (what we now think of as) batting practice could conceivably exceed that by taking three swings every two weeks. And while the odds of making such an impact would be largely contingent on factors beyond their control (like how many taters their teammates hit), there could be even more upside if the stars align — like if they played for last year’s Boston Red Sox, who went to extra innings 20 times instead of our assumed 14.

Whom that applies to, I’m not sure. The Home Run Derby is famously unpredictable, with no clear common traits that separate the winners from the other prolific-slugger contestants. Maybe an established superstar like Judge or Ohtani finds yet another skill that they are the best at, and the price tags for truly elite hitters soar even higher. Maybe it helps all-or-nothing big-swingers like Gallo and Mark Reynolds retain value after their hit tools decline to heretofore-unplayable levels. Or maybe there’s some Quad-A player out there who can’t recognize quality spin and whose name fans don’t know yet, waiting for the day when being dinged for having “five o’clock power” turns out to have a silver lining.

You can bet that teams would start trying to find their designated derby contestants within five minutes of the league signaling that these new rules were a real possibility. And with that much impact at stake, they would swing for the fences in the endeavor. The league’s top swing-off sluggers could command eight figures in (additional) salary on the open market and legitimate prospects at the trade deadline. Ringers whose best skill is taking BP would replace all-around-better players for bench spots on playoff rosters. It would open up a new paradigm of on-field value, and the players who can prove themselves at it will knock it out of the park.

Yet when my wife and I — along with our dog, Asiago — spent a few days in the Portland area a couple weeks ago, I had an uncharacteristically hard time plotting out brewery stops. It’s a strange complaint to have about a region with so much great beer. But therein lay the problem: there were so many highly rated and enthusiastically recommended breweries in southern Maine that it was hard to sort through them all.

The list you are about to read is the resource I wish we had had before our trip. It is my answer to the question of: if you want to do a brewery crawl but you have limited time and liver capacity, how should you prioritize them?

Before we get to the list, some context that informed and caveats about my rankings:

• My favorite beers are hazy IPAs and imperial stouts. I am okay with lighter beers. I am not a fan of most sours.

• My main criterion for a taproom is the specialness of the beers, meaning both quality and exclusivity. Could I find something like this closer to home? While this was not my intent of the rankings, you can think of this as the order of how interested I was in buying cans or bottles to go.

• I understand and respect why some breweries do not offer flights.2 However, I enjoy sampling lots of things, so I prefer taprooms that facilitate that.

• We brought Asiago with us to most of the breweries (and therefore usually sat outside), and the few things we ate at them were just snacks. So the rankings are generally based on our experience of simply sitting outside with a drink at the specified location. My apologies to any taprooms that would be listed higher if I had eaten the food, taken a tour, visited a different outpost, or experienced a different draught list.

• I would recommend and happily return to every single taproom on this list. Even the lowest-ranked breweries were still perfectly pleasant places to spend an afternoon.

• If your favorite Portland brewery is not listed, that doesn’t mean we didn’t like it — just that we didn’t have time to stop there. (Please comment with any glaring omissions, and I’ll make a note to try them next time we’re in the area!)

We squeezed 13 taproom stops into our Maine itinerary. (This was less debaucherous than it sounds: splitting a flight translates to half a beer per person, spread out over almost a week.) Which means we tried a lot of beer, most of it really good, at almost every brewery that I’ve heard considered among the best in and around Portland. Here they are, in ascending order of how strongly I would prioritize visiting them.

13. Belleflower Brewing Company (Portland — East Bayside)

To reiterate, we didn’t have a single bad experience anywhere we went, so being at the bottom of this list means it was cromulent, not unpleasant. Having said that, Belleflower was the least-exciting brewery we visited, and the one where I had the least interest in lingering. Belleflower’s Untappd rating is on par with luminaries like Finback and Kane. (Of the breweries we went to in Maine, only Bissell Brothers has a higher one.) Yet neither the Meadows IPA I had at the taproom (their best-reputed offering available in small pours that day) nor the Ranunculus IPA I had at dinner elsewhere was particularly memorable.

• Allows dogs? Outside only

• Offers flights? No, though half-pours of some beers are available

12. Goodfire Brewing Company (Freeport)

When you picture a modern microbrewery, what you see in your mind’s eye probably looks a lot like Goodfire: small pours of a nice variety of styles, served in either a sleek indoor taproom or outdoors on barrel tables by the cornhole set. The Ack Ack Ack! pale ale, VHS milk stout, and flagship Prime IPA were enjoyable yet not distinctive. I was most impressed with the Raspberry Lutro, which was pretty smooth for a sour.

• Allows dogs? Outside only

• Offers flights? No, though small pours are available

  

11. Oxbow Brewing Company (Portland — East Bayside)

Oxbow was the hardest brewery for me to rank. On the one hand, it was among my favorite actual places we went to: the vast, segmented yet cohesive campus reminded me of Delirium in Brussels, and serving Duckfat fries and milkshakes is a huge plus. I also recognize that someone who likes sours have a better time than I did. (My wife does, and did.) But of the more-than-a-dozen beers Oxbow had on tap the day we stopped in, I counted only two that didn’t make me pucker just from reading the descriptions, and as a result it was my least-favorite drinking experience of the trip (with apologies to the solid Nightfall dark lager).

• Allows dogs? Unclear (we did not try and the website does not say)

• Offers flights? Yes

10. Austin Street Brewery (Portland — East Bayside)

Austin Street was the highlight of our East Bayside brewery crawl. The space itself is fantastic: the open-air greenhouse vibes on a warm summer evening transported us somewhere far away from a New England industrial park. The Offset double IPA and Six Grain milk stout weren’t half-bad, either.

• Allows dogs? Outside only

• Offers flights? No, though half-pours are available

9. Foundation Brewing Company (Portland — Riverton)

In South Philadelphia, the presence of two famous (though not very good) steak shops is enough for the intersection of 9th and Passyunk to be called “Cheesesteak Corner.” By that logic, the otherwise-unassuming street in northern Portland where four taprooms are clustered so close they could share a parking lot ought to be called “Brewery Boulevard.” Foundation is the lowest priority of the quartet, but it’s worth a stop if you have time. I enjoyed the Let’s Do Brunch pastry stout that legitimately tasted like French toast, a raft of solid IPAs, and a delicious red-snapper hot dog.

• Allows dogs? Outside only

• Offers flights? Yes

8. Allagash Brewing Company (Portland — Riverton)

If you care enough about beer to be reading this far into a ranking of craft breweries, you know about Allagash and are likely already planning your visit. Like Oxbow, the draught list hewed almost exclusively to the sour end of the spectrum, though their offerings were subtler and more approachable. My surprise favorite of my flight was the refreshing Clementine Kölsch, followed by the fascinating fusion of the Bandit Falls hopped Tripel. Their non-alcoholic hop seltzer (my go-to weeknight drink of late) was also among my favorites I’ve tried.

• Allows dogs? Outside only (including tarped patio)

• Offers flights? Yes

7. Definitive Brewing Company (Portland — Riverton)

As much as I enjoyed Allagash, by the end of my flight I was craving beer that didn’t make me pucker. Luckily our next stop was across the street at Definitive, where they offered a broad range of styles in a millennial-garage-bar setting. I liked the Particles and Spirals IPAs, and the Late Night: Blueberry Waffles (which tasted just like it sounds) was one of the best sours I’ve ever tried.

• Allows dogs? Yes

• Offers flights? Yes

6. Maine Beer Company (Freeport)

Our visit to Maine was somewhat anticlimactic. Even a few years ago, finding Maine out in the world felt like a rarity; since then I’ve found it at a mid-range grocery store five states away. They had only six beers on draught the day we visited, and I’d seen all but one of them in bottle shops before. Yet Maine’s actual taproom was my favorite of the trip, the signature black barn giving way to brewery-of-the-future architecture that also featured a quiet patio and the cleanest bathrooms of any taproom we visited. And even if its modern ubiquity makes it feel less special, their flagship Lunch IPA is a classic for a reason, and it’s worth the trip to try some fresh from the source.

• Allows dogs? Outside only

• Offers flights? Yes

5. Tributary Brewing Company (Kittery)

I am too young to have been part of the crowds who lined up for releases of Kate the Great, let alone its initial incarnation as Boston Strangler. But it blows my mind that a beer that was revered as the best in the world lives on inside an unassuming strip mall. Mott the Lesser (as it is now known) is a shining example of a stout that tastes like a stout, and in an incredible stroke of luck they still had some of their latest vintage on tap two months after its release day. The intimate taproom and patio make it feel like you’ve stumbled into someone’s secret spot — complete with a tasty array of locally sourced dips for snacking.

• Allows dogs? Outside only (will let them walk through the taproom)

• Offers flights? Yes

4. Bissell Brothers Brewing Company (Portland — Libbytown)

This was the stop I was most excited for on our brewery tour, and it didn’t disappoint. Bissell Brothers is known for their IPAs — when I find them on tap outside of Maine, it’s usually their flagship The Substance — and the imperial Swish lived up to its reputation. But I think their best offerings are their darker ales. The Barrel Aged New Old Stock is the boldest Baltic porter I’ve ever had, and the Double Barrel Angels with Filthy Souls was absurdly drinkable for its 15.1% ABV.

• Allows dogs? No

• Offers flights? No, though small pours are available

3. Mast Landing Brewing Company (Westbrook)

To me, Mast Landing had been synonymous with their flagship Gunner’s Daughter milk stout. Which is a cool accomplishment: how many craft breweries have developed national followings with a low-ABV stout?3 In retrospect, I had inferred that meant their other offerings were nothing to write home about. How wrong I was! Their A Beer Named Duck pale ale was another achievement in packing great flavor into a low-alcohol brew. On the bolder side, I really liked the citrusy Sea People and the experimental Matching Jet Skis IPAs. When in Rome, you can also try Gunner’s Daughter on nitro. And if you’re lucky, they may still have cans of the phenomenal imperial variant in the back.

• Allows dogs? Outside only (will let them walk through the taproom)

• Offers flights? Yes

2. Battery Steele Brewery (Portland — Riverton)

Allagash is the big name in this part of town, and it has surely earned its reputation. Yet I feel for the countless visitors who make the pilgrimage to Riverton without also stopping across the street at what for my money is the best brewery in Portland. Battery Steele feels like you wandered into someone’s garage bar. Our dog fell asleep on the couch; a couple assembled their wedding invitations at the next table over. We liked the nitro-kegged Flume IPA and the mocha-y Looking for Owls stout so much that we bought cans of them, the OPUS Russian imperial stout was worthy of its pretentious name, and uncharacteristically I even went back for more sips of the smooth Endless Ride fruited sour. It was an idyllic place to spend a rainy vacation afternoon.

• Allows dogs? Yes

• Offers flights? Yes

1. Barreled Souls Brewing Company (Saco)

This was the only taproom in Maine we had been to before this summer, and there’s a reason we went back. Barreled Souls isn’t just my favorite brewery in the state. It’s one of the most creative, versatile, and memorable breweries I have visited anywhere. The breadth of their offerings stacks up against anyone, from funky sours to punchy IPAs to meticulously crafted variants of barleywines and stouts. I’m particularly keen on the bourbon-barrel vintages of their Dark Matter imperial stout and Big Bang barleywine. I also like their bolder fare, like the Stay Puft marshmallow fluff stout and their triple IPA that clocks in at nearly 12%, aptly named Diesel. Make it a point to stop by!

• Allows dogs? Outside only

• Offers flights? Yes

For more-regular beer and food reviews, you can also follow my Foodstagram. Cheers!

I wonder if he knew on Inauguration Day 2001, as he solemnly reflected on his legacy and surveyed the Oval Office for the last time, that two decades later he would wind up endorsing a losing candidate in a municipal primary.

The Democratic Party is at a moment of reckoning. The supposed silver lining for the party after the humiliating defeat of the 2024 election was the benefit of contrast — that as the backlash inevitably grew against Donald Trump’s agenda, the Democrats would look better by comparison. So far this has proven half right. Public opinion is already against Trump on every single tracked issue, and the only precedent for a President to be viewed so unfavorably this early into their term was Trump himself eight years ago. Yet the Democrats are now even less popular than Trump, thanks largely to their own base’s frustration with the party’s strategy of feckless opposition. About as many Americans believe the moon landing was faked as strongly approve of Congressional Democrats.

Andrew Cuomo, whom grassroots upstart Zohran Mamdani just defeated in the primary for the New York mayoral election, is a caricature of why voters are disillusioned with the Democratic establishment.

The son of Democratic bigwig Mario Cuomo, Andrew has spent virtually his whole adult life in politics. In his most recent position of governor, he used his power as the head of the New York Democratic machine to cede control of the state legislature to Republicans. He won the hearts of liberals around the country and an Emmy for his video briefings early in the COVID-19 pandemic, then proved himself to be one of the country’s biggest public-health hypocrites by falsifying mortality data and slowing vaccine distribution in service of a political feud. Cuomo’s brother, a prominent newscaster, was caught secretly helping him navigate the media coverage of his numerous scandals. He is so far removed from day-to-day life in the city he’s been seeking to represent that he forgot that it is illegal to turn right on red.

Of course there is the matter of why Cuomo is a former governor. He resigned in disgrace in 2021 while facing at least 11 separate allegations of sexual harassment. In a party that ostensibly cares about inappropriate conduct towards women, most assumed that this was the end of his career — until a few months ago, when he entered the race to be New York’s next mayor, and immediately emerged as the frontrunner to unseat incumbent Eric Adams.

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As the campaign wore on and his name-recognition advantage wore off, a desperate Cuomo (who is not Jewish) tried to reframe the race as a superficial referendum on antisemitism. It’s a familiar move for Cuomo: he attempted to launder the start of his grotesque rehabilitation tour through performative allyship two years ago by launching an advocacy organization that never actually did anything. Still, it’s remarkable that a goy who not even five years ago was accused of singling out the Orthodox community with COVID-19 restrictions (justified by citing a decade-old event as a contemporary infraction) and once grumbled “these people and their fucking tree houses” about Sukkot celebrants saw supportiveness of Jewish constituents as a favorable issue for him. How many elderly Jews were among the COVID-19 victims Cuomo hid from the public? Even if you accept that Mamdani would be bad for Jewish New Yorkers — as a Jewish American, so far as I can tell, this is a smear mostly rooted in Islamophobia and the antisemitic conflation of Judaism with Zionism — surely Jewish candidate Brad Lander would have been a better choice than the guy who derisively refers to us as “these people.”

All of which is to say that, if a member of the moderate Democratic establishment were serious about seeking common ground with the younger and further-left coalition members whom the party has been neglecting for the past several years, this primary offered a very convenient opportunity to do it.

Endorsing the progressive Mamdani, or the ideologically similar Lander, or simply the broader coalition against Cuomo would have been incredibly easy: I don’t always agree with Mamdani, but we can’t let someone like Cuomo back into power, or supporting a cartoonishly corrupt sex pest is not a good look for the centrist movement. It’s a municipal office in a city that’s seen as a liberal bubble no matter who’s in charge, and the moderate wing’s standard-bearer was persona non grata mere months earlier. With the stakes so low, wouldn’t it have been smart to throw the left flank a bone?

And yet! Several dozen Democratic leaders endorsed Cuomo rather than cede an inch to younger progressives — even though nearly half of them had previously called for his resignation. Fellow former governor David Paterson called Cuomo a “bully” then yet voiced his support now. Congressman Ritchie Torres, an aspiring gubernatorial candidate and a self-appointed gentile arbiter of Jewish identity, stressed Cuomo’s “competence” in 2025 after describing his “collapse of confidence” in 2021. While current Governor Kathy Hochul — who took over when Cuomo resigned — stopped short of endorsing him, she was careful to distinguish between the criticisms she offered at the time and her assessment of him now. Ditto for Kirsten Gillibrand, who courageously stoked the public pressure that led to Al Franken’s resignation from the Senate over similar allegations, yet now saves her fury for her new intra-party enemies: colleagues who are insufficiently obsequious to the Trump administration.

The establishment faction of the party constantly preaches to the rest of the coalition about the importance of pragmatism and compromise. They just showed just how disinterested they are in taking their own advice. In the wake of Mamdani’s victory, that choice now looks not just craven but idiotic.

New Yorkers weren’t the only ones feeling the Cuomo-mentum. It is not my place to parse the influence of longtime congressman James Clyburn, one of the most-esteemed Black leaders in the party, nor the significance of his endorsement. But I wonder, if you pressed him, how he would explain feeling compelled to vouch for someone as odious as Cuomo in on a civic election hundreds of miles away from his district. (This isn’t the first time he’s chipped in to help a corrupt centrist stave off a progressive challenger.) And if we are getting into the identity politics of endorsements, it ought to have been relevant to Cuomo’s claim as the anti-antisemitic candidate that both Mamdani’s highest-billed endorser (Bernie Sanders) and his hardest-working supporter (Brad Lander, the third-place finisher who stumped with Mamdani and pushed his own voters to rank Mamdani over Cuomo) are Jewish.

Which brings us back to Cuomo’s premier backer: Bill Clinton. Obviously Clinton is ideologically aligned with Cuomo, who served in his cabinet. Nor is it surprising that Clinton, who has a long history of sexual-assault allegations, is unbothered by a serial harasser holding power. Yet his choice to actually endorse Cuomo strikes me as utterly bizarre. Isn’t it beneath a man who once held the nuclear codes to back a candidate everybody hates in a municipal primary campaign for a city he doesn’t live in? Why did he stake his political capital on a candidate so lazy that he let ChatGPT write his platform? What does it say about Clinton’s political impotence — and the power of the grassroots movement he tried to stop — that the rank and file of his own party were not moved by the former Leader of the Free World throwing his weight around in a local race?

I followed the campaign closely even from a couple states away — a reluctant indulgence to New Yorkers’ presumption to be the center of the universe — and was flabbergasted at how city insiders closed ranks behind Cuomo. I don’t expect the Democratic Party to be welcoming to a grassroots movement like Mamdani’s campaign. But I naïvely thought that, at a time when their base demands energy and their recent electoral results require humility, party leaders would not be so shameless as to throw in their lot with a man they’d recently pressured into resigning. Now we know just how many ostensibly liberal pols are more bothered by free bus fare and childcare than sexual harassment and playing petty politics with public health.

It’s a despicable reflection on all the public figures who backed Cuomo that they would rather compromise their morals and decency than their myopic view of what and whom the Democratic Party stands for. And in the wake of his — and their — defeat, it’s also a humiliating one.

It’s strange to feel optimistic about electoral politics. But the biggest city in the country is now on track to also have one of its coolest mayors. Maybe even more encouragingly, the Democratic rank and file rejected the top-down push to keep power in the hands of the old boys club — and it happened in New York, where the voters represent the base on whom so many of the party’s most-feckless leaders rely. The city that never sleeps just sent out a wakeup call. Start spreading the news…

Take “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” I love “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town.” Bruce Springsteen’s version is #1 on my latest holiday music rankings. But every subsequent recording sounds like an attempt to mimic Springsteen, whose signature reworked chorus was, in turn, borrowed from The Crystals. “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” is what a mathematician might call a solved problem. Yet it remains de rigueur for artists making Christmas albums to cut their own versions, which inevitably pale in comparison to The Boss’. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Sleigh Ride” feel similarly oversaturated. And while there aren’t many covers of “You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” or “Christmas In Hollis,” the original renditions are so iconic that rerecording them seems like a futile enterprise.

On the other hand, some carols are ripe for new covers. Whether because it’s a beloved tune that lacks a clear definitive recording, or because a high-profile new version might help an overlooked song break through the arbitrary filters of what department-store DJs decide to play, each of the classics below would be a great lead single for a contemporary pop singer or rock band’s holiday album. Or in Moneyball terms, they represent market inefficiencies that enterprising artists could exploit for a good chance of a holiday hit.

Why am I writing about this the first week of June, basically as far away from holiday-music season as you can get within the Gregorian calendar? Because it takes time to plan, record, and produce an album, so in the off-chance this falls into Mariah Carey or Kelly Clarkson’s hands, maybe they could cut some tracks by December.

Let it Snow

The continued (if not increasing) prominence of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” on December playlists is incredibly frustrating. It seems to me that, whether or not you think the song is problematic, the inclusive spirit of the holidays ought to mean respecting that many people don’t want to hear lyrics about spiking drinks. Especially when our cultural canon offers another beloved and much better song about whether wintry weather is a sufficient excuse for a lover to spend the night.

“Let it Snow” is my favorite of the common Christmas-adjacent tunes, and 80 years after its composition there is still no definitive version of it. Even the best covers you hear on the radio, by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, are hardly authoritative. The bar to record the best version of the best secular carol — and thus create an instant holiday classic — is a lot lower than it should be.

We Three Kings

I’ve had the pleasure of playing in multiple caroling bands over the years, and every time I hear woodwinds and brass play “We Three Kings” I am moved by it anew. It’s an elegantly simple tune with beautiful harmonies and countermelodies, and therefore a fantastic canvas for an artist to put their own touches on it.

The definitive pop recording of “We Three Kings” already exists: the hauntingly gorgeous rendition by The Beach Boys. (I’m also partial to Blondie’s punk version, though it strips out the choral elements I like so much.) Yet for whatever reason it’s not in the standard rotation when you’re flipping through FM stations or waiting in line at Kohl’s. In a perfect world we would change that; realistically that ship has probably sailed. So our best hope is for a contemporary band to put out a worthy new cover that DJs actually decide to play.

I Believe in Father Christmas

Some people find the dour self-importance of Greg Lake’s holiday protest anthem to be grating. To others (like me), Lake successfully sells his preachiness on the strength of his Prokofievian melody and the bombast of a 100-piece orchestra. Lately the skeptics have gotten their way: modern DJs now treat a song that hit #2 on the UK charts (behind some pretty tough competition) as a niche afterthought.

As far as I’m aware, the only notable band to cover “I Believe in Father Christmas” is U2, whose rendition is so boring and phoned-in that I’m only half-joking about my conspiracy theory that they don’t like the song and sandbagged their version in hopes of tarnishing the original’s reputation. I’d love for another artist to actually try putting their own creative spin on this charmingly bizarre carol. It would be tough to cover a song where the distinctive arrangement is so integral to its greatness — but then again, the original recording process hardly seemed auspicious at the time, either.

Rock of Ages (Ma'oz Tzur)

The average American’s exposure to Hanukkah music is as a punchline. There’s Adam Sandler’s now-four-part series of “The Chanukah Song[s],” the Borscht Belt stylings of Tom Lehrer’s “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica,” and that moment in Straight No Chaser’s “The 12 Days of Christmas” medley when one singer awkwardly breaks into “I Have a Little Dreidel” — a strange joke that makes an already-godawful track also feel vaguely antisemitic. With the occasional exception of the Barenaked Ladies’ “Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah,” soft-rock DJs eschew the rich tradition of Jewish celebratory music in favor of (mostly unfunny) comedy.

Enter “Rock of Ages,” a descendent of the Hebrew “Ma'oz Tzur.” It’s a gorgeous hymn whose best-known set of English lyrics shares similar themes to “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night.” I imagine any singer who does a good “O Holy Night” could also make “Rock of Ages” soar. As it happens, a quick Sandler-ian search informed me that Josh Groban is half-Jewish.

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

What bugs me most about “We Need a Little Christmas” is its anachronousness. “Silver Bells” and “Up on the Rooftop”? They’re boring, but I concede they are at least seasonably appropriate. By contrast, the yawn-worthy “We Need a Little Christmas” is about the fact that it’s the wrong time of year to celebrate Christmas. Its retcon into a holiday standard reflects what may be our society’s most-egregious musical misunderstanding this side of “Born in the U.S.A.” And as long as we’re listening to a mediocre song about how it’s not the holiday season, that may as well include a good one too.

Frank Loesser, who wrote “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?,” was a seasonal purist who resented that people mistook the story in his lyrics — of a head-over-heels suitor jumping the gun with their “jackpot question in advance” — as taking place in late December. I respect his prescriptivism. But the Rubicon has already been crossed, so if we must tolerate “We Need a Little Christmas,” Loessler’s sweetly lovesick tune should also be fair game. Like “We Three Kings,” we’re not lacking for a quality version, but I’ll be asking Santa for a worthy new rendition that would actually get some airplay (or inspire DJs to revisit Ella Fitzgerald’s).

The first is that it seemed topical. Memorial Day marks the start of picnic season, that special time of year when you can show up to a potluck with a bowl that’s 30 percent mayonnaise and call it a salad. Among this genre of tangy summer sides, the deviled egg reigns supreme.

The second is that I wanted to preserve my recipe. In all my years of making wicked eggs, I’d always eyeballed the ingredients and improvised the seasonings — even as I inevitably vowed that this time I would take real measurements. (I know, shocking to hear that that’s how I cook.) Last month a friend asked me for the recipe in preparation for her seder, and I was embarrassed that I had nothing concrete to give her. So this year I documented my steps, and I figured I should publish them before I lost track of my notes.

One of the many Passover culinary traditions I’ve developed over the years is treating the seder plate like a Chopped basket: how many of the ritual ingredients can I integrate into a single dish? Sometimes this works, as in the “matz-stitsio” (pastitsio with matzoh instead of ziti) I made this year, with lamb and celery sauce and eggy béchamel. Sometimes it doesn’t, like when the flavors of ground lamb, caramelized apples, and custard proved too discorant for my “Haggadah strata.”

My most-enduring innovation was integrating horseradish, celery, and matzoh into deviled eggs. When I first told my Grandma Joanne about my concoction, she dubbed the recipe “wicked eggs,” after the misunderstood member of the symbolic Four Children for whom the Haggadah prescribes a jarringly stern approach.

The key to this recipe is using horseradish (the ritual maror, symbolizing the bitterness of oppression) as the predominant spice. Horseradish and mayonnaise are a great pairing; a prototype of this recipe simply used store-bought horseradish sauce. (It’s a sensible shortcut, though it’s harder to fine-tune the flavor, and it neuters the horseradish’s distinctive funk.) Horseradish adds acid and deeper bitter dimension to the heat, and gives the normally savory filling an almost-sour edge — there’s a dissonance in the first bite that you quickly start to crave.

The other symbolic supplements are natural pairings: celery (representing the renewal of spring) is a common addition to brighten up egg salad, and the crumbled matzoh (from the hasty exodus) simulates the crackers you may dip in it. Here their main purpose is texture, adding pleasant crunch to what is otherwise a pretty mushy bite.

“Wicked” Deviled Eggs

This elevated take on the simple classic makes a great party snack, whether served on a seder plate or at a picnic table. Makes 24 pieces.

Ingredients

• 12 hard-boiled eggs, peeled

• 1/3 cup mayonnaise

• 1-3 tbsp jarred prepared horseradish

• 2 tbsp paprika, plus more for garnish

• 1/4 cup celery, finely chopped (about one medium stalk)

• salt, black pepper, hot sauce to taste

• crushed matzoh or breadcrumbs, for garnish

Steps

1. Slice eggs in half lengthwise. Remove yolks and place in a large mixing bowl. Arrange the halved whites in a single layer on a plate or cutting board.

2. Add mayonnaise to yolks and mash together. Add 1 tbsp horseradish, the paprika, the celery, a dash of salt, a grind of black pepper, and a splash of hot sauce. Mix until well combined.

3. Taste yolk mixture and adjust horseradish and seasonings as needed.

4. Scoop mixture into a piping bag. Squirt into yolk cavities, filling about a half-inch above the height of the egg white.

5. Garnish with crushed matzoh or breadcrumbs and sprinkle with paprika. Serve cold.

Additional Tips

• Our Instant Pot is the most-consistent and -foolproof hard-boiling method I’ve ever used. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, the start-from-room-temp approach is my next-best recommendation.

• The right amount of horseradish will vary according to its potency and your taste for it. Start conservatively and add another teaspoon or two at a time until you approach the limits of your guests’ palates.

• My Aunt Lois — whom I’ve written about before — would advise you to add schmaltz and gribenes to the yolk mixture, which takes these eggs to the next level in both taste and cholesterol. (You can read interpretations of her recipes for both schmaltz and egg salad in ’s The Book of Schmaltz: Love Song to a Forgotten Fat.)

• You can make these ahead and keep them covered in the fridge, but the filling looks nicer and has better texture when the eggs are served fresh.

The organizational turmoil also boiled up to the front office. The Browns churned through nine heads of football operations in those 21 years, with none lasting more than four seasons. In 11 of the 12 NFL drafts between 2009 and 2021, their war room was overseen by a general manager who’d been on the job for less than a year and a half. This Thursday will be the first time a Browns GM with over two years experience has made a first-round pick since before Jimmy Haslam bought the team in 2012.

Obviously this instability is not something to aspire to. Discerning cause from effect in how the Browns paired historic on-field incompetence with revolving-door leadership is a chicken-and-egg riddle. Did Cleveland become the laughingstock of the NFL because the team kept hiring blatantly incompetent leaders? Or was the internal turmoil from the two most-visible non-player roles in the organization collectively averaging a firing every year why they failed to win a single playoff game from 1999 until 2020? To say nothing of the human costs of such upheaval, doled out among countless hardworking lower-level staffers whose names the fans don’t know.

Regardless, the point is that this organization is not known for its institutional loyalty. (Just look at the infamous quarterback jersey.) To the contrary, they have earned a reputation as one of the most fickle organizations in all of professional sports.

Which makes it all the stranger that the Browns, after a miserable 3-14 season, are heading into 2025 — starting with this week’s NFL Draft, the premier roster-upgrade event of the league calendar — with their longstanding leadership group still intact.

The NFL Players Association’s annual player survey offers unique insight into what professional athletes think of their employers. For 2025, the Browns’ median grade across the 11 categories was a C-. They earned an A for their newly built weight room; they got an F- for their cramped locker room, and their stretched-too-thin training staff ranked last in the league for player satisfaction.

Among the categories players reviewed were their head coaches: how respectful they are of players’ time and how receptive they are to internal feedback. Just four NFL coaches earned grades below a B this year, three of whom are no longer employed. The New Orleans Saints fired Dennis Allen in the middle of the season. The Chicago Bears and Jacksonville Jaguars cut ties with Matt Eberflus and Doug Pederson, respectively, at the end of the year. The only one still leading a team is Cleveland’s Kevin Stefanski.

That the Browns have clubhouse issues is not breaking news. Their messiness (figuratively and literally) was a major storyline of three of their last four seasons. For at least two years we’ve seen enough smoke to infer that Stefanski is disinterested in or incapable of managing the discord, and may in fact be part of the problem. It got lost in the afterglow of his Coach of the Year honors last year, but he earned similarly subpar reviews in the 2024 player poll, too. While his #29 (out of 32) ranking in using players’ time efficiently held steady from last year, Stefanski’s overall survey grade dropped from a B- to a C in 2025 because his perceived openness to feedback fell from 23rd in the NFL to 30th (third-worst).

A lack of respect for players is not necessarily a dealbreaker for an NFL coach if it comes with success on the field. (See: Belicheck, Bill.) Yet Stefanski has not distinguished himself here either. He took the reins in 2020 amidst lofty expectations for an ascendant Cleveland dynasty, and led the Browns to their only playoff win in my living memory in his first season at the helm. Since then, Stefanski’s teams have gone 29-41. He heads into his sixth season with a career winning percentage of .471 (including the playoffs) while leading rosters that had mostly fancied themselves contenders. Despite his reputation as a playcalling wunderkind, both of the ostensible franchise quarterbacks Stefanski has been handed have faltered under his watch. Yes, he deserves credit for reaching the postseason two years ago while running the offense through a signed-off-the-couch Joe Flacco. But of the 11 players who have suited up under center for Stefanski, Flacco remains the only one you could say has succeeded in his system.

Eventually, evaluating a player becomes more about the success they’ve shown in their career than the promise teams saw when they first signed them. The same ought to apply to a coach. How much longer before Stefanski’s actual record is weighed against his boy-genius reputation?

Upstream on the org chart is General Manager Andrew Berry. Like Stefanski, Berry is starting his sixth year on the job, and has overseen the Browns’ devolution from a nascent juggernaut into a new era of mediocrity. The defining decision of Berry’s tenure came in 2022, when he traded Cleveland’s next three years of first-round draft picks for Deshaun Watson, then signed him to a record-setting $230 million contract. It’s not hyperbole to call this the worst deal in the history of American sports. Watson has missed 63 percent of his team’s games since he arrived in Cleveland — a number that will presumably rise further in 2025, as an Achilles injury may cost him the entire season — and has played like a legitimately good NFL quarterback for exactly one half of a single game. There remains some ambiguity about whether it was really Berry’s decision to sell the farm for Watson and to remain committed to him as the QB1 long after his poor play became apparent. (More on that in a bit.) But Berry is the titular head of football operations, he presented himself as having led the internal research into Watson’s off-field character, and he continues to affirm that he was “on board” with the deal.

Let’s set aside the moral grotesqueness of the Browns hitching their wagon to a man whom at least 30 women have accused of sexual assault or harassment. (Except insofar as I find those who condone what he did sufficiently unsympathetic that my usual discomfort with speculating about sports executives’ job security does not apply.) Critiquing the Watson trade is not mere Monday-morning quarterbacking. There were valid reasons to question the wisdom of deal from the beginning, from running Baker Mayfield out of town a year after he came one blown call away from leading the Browns to the AFC Championship Game, to squeezing their contention window from both ends by punting the 2022 season while Watson served a lengthy suspension as well as squandering the draft capital and cap space that could have helped Cleveland augment their core as they aged. And while no one expected Watson to be this bad, a player who’d sat out the previous year clearly carried elevated performance risk.

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Yet even that framing is unduly deferential. A GM’s job is to make the team better, not to be merely no wronger than the fans. The biggest transaction of Berry’s tenure (and perhaps the history of the Browns franchise) was a failure so massive that it singlehandedly overshadows the sum total of every shrewd move he has made over the last five years. Berry and his staff completely misevaluated Watson as both an athlete and a person. The simplest theory to explain the front office’s bizarre enamoredness with Watson — to the point where, when they correctly identified last offseason that Flacco would be a threat to usurp the starting quarterback job once Watson returned from injury, their solution was to replace Flacco with a worse and less-popular backup (who is also accused of multiple instances of sexual assault) — is that Berry’s decisions flow from a first principle of embracing of the most-odious man in the NFL, and that this reactionist ideology takes precedence over building a winning football roster.

The Browns have finally signaled that they are seeking a new QB1 in the wake of Watson’s latest injury. As he surveys the names on the draft board, what has Berry done to give anyone confidence that his next attempt to find Cleveland’s franchise quarterback will go better than his last one? I’m not the only one with doubts. Just ask Myles Garrett, the team’s most popular player, who has so little faith in the front office’s ability to right the ship that he publicly requested a trade from the only organization he has ever known (and required a record-breaking contract extension to rescind his skepticism).

Finally there’s Paul DePodesta, who is entering his 10th season as the Browns’ Chief Strategy Officer. He has carved out an enviable position in which he has considerable influence but minimal accountability. (Assuming he gets another contract extension, he will be in striking distance of Paul Brown’s 17 years with his eponymous franchise.) The vagueness of DePodesta’s job description has arguably become a meme, to the point where even reporters who cover the team struggle to understand what exactly he does. Yet there are two areas where his impact has been unambiguous.

The first is building out the analytics department. DePodesta is known as a pioneer in sports analytics, a field that I am obviously quite supportive of — I once looked up to him, and I was thrilled when Cleveland first hired him. In this regard he has been at least outwardly successful, as the R&D group he fostered is considered the best in the NFL. But there is a conspicuous dissonance between the reputation of the Browns’ decision-making processes and how their moves play out. Contrast Cleveland’s slapstick-esque ineptitude with the other two consensus top-analytical front offices in the NFL: the Baltimore Ravens, who have the second-best record in the league over the nine seasons since DePodesta’s hiring; and the reigning-champion Philadelphia Eagles, who have won two Super Bowls in the last eight years. To put it another way: When the Browns recommitted to Watson as their QB1 last year, did their vaunted R&D department somehow miss that he hadn’t played at an NFL-caliber level since 2020, as anyone who looked up his metrics (or just watched him play) could have told them? Or is Cleveland’s decision-making process so mercurial that having accurate models and insightful analysis was not relevant?

DePodesta’s other clear achievement is the scorched-earth rebuild he embarked upon when he first took the job. Cleveland had a 1-15 record in his first season with the club, then famously went 0-16 in 2017. Such flagrant tanking for high draft picks, combined with a more-enlightened approach to player evaluation, was pitched as an expedited plan to infuse a dynasty’s worth of young talent into the organization. Eight years later, his plan has yet to bear fruit. The Browns have an abysmal 55-95-1 record (counting their three playoff games) since DePodesta took the reins, including a staggeringly mediocre 54-64-1 record after those first two humiliating years. His near-decade tenure has featured just two winning seasons and only one better-than-bottom-two ranking in the AFC North. Compare that to the division-rival Ravens, who have finished .500 or better and in first or second place in eight of the last nine seasons; and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who haven’t had a losing record since 2003. At one point they at least appeared to be on a better track than the Cincinnati Bengals, who were stuck in last place while the Baker Mayfield-led Browns appeared ascendant. But the rebuild down I-71 has ultimately proven more successful: Cincinnati has enjoyed four winning seasons in a row (including a Super Bowl appearance) since Cleveland’s last (and only recent) playoff win.

Professional sports is a production business. The architect of a botched rebuild rarely sticks around to take a second crack at it.

If you care enough about Cleveland sports to be 2,000 words into an article about the Browns, you’re probably waiting for me to mention Jimmy Haslam. Haslam, who co-owns the franchise along with his wife Dee, is notoriously impetuous and enjoys an active role in running the team. Any critique of the Browns front office carries the caveat that the decisions they are blamed for may be coming from over their heads. For example, it has been speculated that Berry was not a fan of the Watson trade, or at least that it wouldn’t have mattered if he weren’t. I assume there are frustrated folks inside the organization who have seen how things work and would quibble with my laying so much blame at the nominal decision-makers’ feet.

But as the saying goes, you can’t fire the owner. And even if they aren’t the problems, five years into the Head Coach and GMs’ respective tenures and nine seasons into the Chief Strategy Officer’s, it’s safe to say they aren’t the solutions, either.

Building an NFL roster while working under Haslam’s thumb seems like a particularly thankless task. Still, managing up is part of any job. Berry could be the best football-operations mind in the league, but if he is making major transactions under duress, the team would be better off with a less-shrewd GM whom Haslam trusts with more autonomy. The meddlesome-owner alibi is flimsier for DePodesta, who by all accounts has Haslam’s ear, and whose self-described primary role boils down to ensuring disciplined organizational alignment in how they make decisions. It also does nothing to excuse the constant discord in Stefanski’s clubhouses. Nor, in an age when well-reputed sports executives are increasingly selective about whom they work for, does it ameliorate the gross and demonstrably disingenuous personal adulation each man has lavished upon the serial sex pest in the locker room.

The Cleveland Browns went 3-13 in 2015. It was their worst season in 15 years, an embarrassing showing even for an infamously ignominious franchise. In an impressive display of self-awareness, they recognized the need to change course and made a bold pivot, entrusting their strategic vision to an innovative trailblazer from another sport.

Now it’s 2025 and the Browns just went 3-14. The remedy this time? Running it back with the same leadership group, for the sixth season in a row: the GM who made the worst trade in sports history running the draft, the least-popular incumbent coach in the league leading the clubhouse, and the executive who engineered the last failed rebuild overseeing the vision. After decades of constant internal turmoil, it’s nice to see the Browns enjoy some organizational stability. If only that didn’t mean they were locked into such mediocrity.

As someone who connects to my Jewish heritage more through culture and traditions than pious faith, I see including goyim in the holiday festivities as a given — people of all creeds can appreciate latkes at Hanukkah or brisket on Rosh Hashanah. Yet Pesach in particular is about proclaiming and sharing our narrative in our own words. The collection of texts that takes attendees through the Seder rituals is called the Haggadah, which literally means “telling.” Most of evening is spent recounting the Exodus for anyone who may not know the story, through readings and songs and group activities. The section on the Four Children offers metatextual guidance on how to introduce newcomers to our traditions. At the end of the night we pour an extra cup of wine and open the door to symbolize that all are welcome at our table.

The Passover holiday is, in so many words, a celebration of the Jewish people’s right to define and express our own values. Which feels like a radical idea right now.

Over the last 18 months, influential gentiles from across the American political spectrum have worked to identify the Jewish religion with uncritical support for the Israeli military.

The conflation of our Judaism with Zionist jingoism, both from within and outside the Jewish community, is neither new nor mysterious — I need not attempt rehashing the history of this here — but the ubiquity of the association has ratcheted up since the attacks of October 7. There is no other foreign government for whom disbelieving that their actions are beyond reproach is considered discrimination against the state religion. (No one claims that criticizing Keir Starmer’s policies is offensive to Anglicans.) And insisting that speaking against Israeli military action is definitionally antisemitic also brazenly ignores how our people actually feel about it.

I am Jewish. From the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ attacks, I have been vocal about disavowing the wanton destruction of Gaza (to say nothing of IDF’s recent operations in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria), about the impropriety of weaponizing our own millennia of oppression to justify the immiseration of another people, and about the difference between performative gentile allyship and the awkward, introspective work that truly fighting antisemitism requires. Most of the Jews I have talked to are appalled by the violence being waged in our name. The strongest advocate in the Senate against the destruction, Bernie Sanders, is Jewish. The most prominent group organizing protests against the IDF’s actions is called Jewish Voice for Peace. Poll after poll have shown that majorities of Jewish Americans support a ceasefire, oppose unconditional arms sales to the IDF, and do not believe it is antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government.

In the spirit of the season, as our traditions command us to tell our story to all who will listen, there should be no ambiguity about this: Gentiles dishonestly claiming to represent the interests of Jewish people to further their own ideological aims is not just tokenizing and appropriative. It is antisemitic.

While this pernicious ideology has long festered on the right, no one in recent years has done more to build bipartisan consensus for this tokenism than Joe Biden. The then-leader of the country with the largest Jewish community in the world repeatedly claimed that his constituents’ safety was Israel’s responsibility, not his. Biden spent last spring inveighing against the alleged antisemitism of antiwar demonstrations, while refusing to acknowledge that the participants were disproportionately Jewish. He condemned the harassment of Jewish students in the abstract yet was steadfastly unmoved by the brutality police and counterprotestors visited upon peaceful Jewish students. His press secretary compared these demonstrators, including the Jewish Americans attempting to reclaim their own identity from a movement that seeks to tokenize them, to white supremacists.

Donald Trump clearly understands that leaders of religious states do not speak for all of their faiths’ followers, since his Vice President is publicly spatting with the Pope. Which betrays his approach to combatting antisemitism as not just a dangerous escalation but plainly disingenuous. Distilling Trump’s dizzying history of bigotry into a few examples is a Sisyphean task: the first that come to mind are identifying “very fine people” at a Neo-Nazi rally, announcing he would blame the Jews if he lost the 2024 election, and canceling observations of Holocaust Remembrance Day. One of his two highest-profile advisors keeps endorsing antisemitic lies on his social media platform and celebrated Trump’s inauguration with multiple Nazi salutes. The other claimed COVID-19 was targeted to spare the Ashkenazi community and that vaccine mandates were worse than the Holocaust. Yet thanks to the Washington consensus that Judaism is synonymous with Zionism, Trump has successfully branded himself as not just an ally but a warrior against antisemitism.

This framing — which has received distressingly little pushback — now undergirds many of the Trump administration’s most dangerous policies. Abducting and detaining legal residents who had spoken against the war in Gaza, like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk. Defunding institutions of higher learning that were deemed insufficiently hostile to campus protestors unless they acquiesce to ideological demands. Screening social media for criticism of Israel to identify deportation targets. And of course the continued full-throated support of a military campaign that has already claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives.

This is supposed to be for my safety?

Yes, there are Zionist Jews who happily endorse this definition of antisemitism. Some in our community cheered the arrest of Khalil, just as they did for the crackdowns against student protestors a year ago. The Anti-Defamation League now classifies critiques of Israel as antisemitic incidents while handwaving away Elon Musk’s Nazi salutes as “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm,” a pivot that is costing a respected authority on combatting anti-Jewish hatred both its credibility and its staff. A month after the October 7 attacks, Chuck Schumer co-headlined a rally with John Hagee, an infamous demagogue so bigoted that John McCain disavowed his endorsement. Evidently Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish politician in American history, is willing to make bedfellows with anyone who supports Israel — even if they believe “God sent Hitler” to hasten Jews’ migration there.

I would never accuse these members of our community of not being truly Jewish based on how they interpret our professed ideals, a principle not all of them reciprocate towards those critical of Israel. But I would ask them, and any gentiles who believe in good faith that Zionism is the primary criterion of anti-antisemitism, to think through this Faustian bargain. At a time when anti-Jewish hatred is so prevalent — including among some pro-Palestinian activists, a nuance that gets obscured while debating the broad allegations against the movement at large — will it make us safer if gentiles are conditioned not to take allegations of antisemitism seriously? Is it in our interest for any goyim to act as gatekeepers for Jewish identity, let alone flagrant bigots who insist that bombing hospitals and embargoing humanitarian aid represent our values? When reactionary governments use contrived ideological grounds to target ethnic and religious minorities, does that usually turn out well for us?

To borrow the phrasing of the Haggadah: On most nights we understand that our millennia of persecution give us common cause with anyone suffering from oppression, and that simmering hatred for other marginalized groups eventually finds its way to us. Why is this night different from all other nights?

My alma mater is among the educational institutions Trump is threatening to defund. Just as broken clocks are right twice a day, I agree that Jewish students were treated unfairly amid last year’s campus protests — though for a very different reason than he asserts.

In October, a group of Jewish students celebrated the harvest festival of Sukkot by sleeping outside in a sukkah, a traditional temporary structure where celebrants spend time during the holiday — which in this case was decorated to protest the war in Gaza. In the past, students were allowed to spend the night on the green for Sukkot without incident; I too have done so for far less valid reasons than religious observation. Yet last year, campus security woke the observing students in the middle of the night and threatened them with conduct violations for sleeping in their sukkah.

Harassing Jewish people for peacefully celebrating their faith in a way that confounds the stereotypes to which gentiles would prefer that we conform: A fitting metaphor for this political moment.

History remembers those who decided our people’s expressions of identity were politically inconvenient. My Jewishness is not defined by Benjamin Netanyahu, and it’s certainly not up to Biden or Trump. I wonder what these gentile demagogues would think if they attended a Seder and heard the Haggadah’s teachings: That we must proclaim our own stories and values, that we cannot turn away from any people’s injustice and suffering, and that temperamental border-control-obsessed despots with strong opinions about how Jews should behave do not have our best interests at heart. Perhaps then they would let my people go free from their shameless tokenism.

I had been playing baseball with the same group of kids since T-ball. They were fixtures in my life every summer, and even the spring — when the parochial school where most of them went was short on players, they brought in a Jewish ringer to their CYO roster. During the season I spent more time with their parents and siblings than most of my own relatives.

Often I was the worst player on the team. I was small, slow, and a little afraid of the ball. I could make good clean plays on grounders to third base, but not quickly enough to throw the runner out. Fittingly for my future career, my best position was statistician. Yet I never felt like my lack of athleticism mattered. The coterie of dads who rotated in to help run the team fostered an atmosphere of friendly competition in which friendly was far more important than competition. We all liked to win, but we went out for ice cream together afterwards either way.

Most seasons our head coach was Chaz, whom I adored. He wasn’t “Mr. Deptola” or “Coach Deptola” or even “Coach Chaz” — just “Chaz.” Going by his first name was representative of the tone he set for the team. He believed in the fundamentals and saw it as his responsibility to teach them, but always did so with a smile on his face. He never embarrassed his sons or gave them special treatment. He went out of his way to make every single kid feel encouraged and supported.

Chaz was my coach during my formative years when baseball grew from a hobby to an obsession. In retrospect, given that I went on to work for MLB teams, his commitment to making it fun probably changed the course of my entire life.

Two things happened when aged out of coach-pitch and made the leap to the kid-pitch league. First, Chaz handed off the reins to Coach Kevin. I’m calling him “Coach Kevin” here because he’s the kind of guy people probably Google, and it doesn’t seem necessary for this to pop up when someone looks him up for professional reasons. But it’s important that you know that I never called him by his first name. He wasn’t that kind of guy. Even when working with kids who knew him well, and after inheriting his leadership role from a beloved coach who went by “Chaz.” To us he was “Coach LastName,” if not “Mr. LastName.” Enough said.

I considered Coach Kevin one of the meanest adults I knew. Maybe he thought our group of generally amiable and well-behaved kids needed a few hours a week of tough love. Maybe he was just a jerk. He wasn’t afraid to chastise the team if we played poorly, or if he thought we weren’t demonstrating the diligent focus and sound fundamentals befitting of our suburban youth rec league.

One time his son was pitching and had the yips, but Coach Kevin refused to take him out of the game. The poor kid kept calling out to the dugout, crying from both arm pain and embarrassment, begging his dad to go to the bullpen. Coach Kevin stood stone-faced against the chain-link fence and defiantly watched his son struggle until the umpire invoked the mercy rule. I remember being glad he wasn’t my dad. (Though he turned out to be quite a schmuck, too.)

The second change was that I became a much more valuable player. Being the shortest kid in the league came with an advantage: I walked a lot. The fourth-graders on the mound couldn’t find my tiny strike zone. I learned that I had a better chance of getting on base if I waited for ball four than if I actually swung. Long before I read Moneyball, I would proudly report how high my OBP was. I earned a reputation for my plate discipline. Years later I befriended someone who’d been on another team in the same league, and she recognized me as the kid who always walked. She recalled her coach’s futile exasperation — Don’t walk Lewie! — moments before I inevitably jogged to first base.

So as I stepped into the batter’s box that fateful night at Cumberland Park, I was in no hurry to swing. I took the first pitch. Then the second. I worked the count to 3-2 with the bat resting on my shoulder. The payoff pitch came in at my knees but outside, three inches off the plate.

Ball four. A walk-off bases-loaded walk. A literal walk-off. My heart soared. My patience and keen eye had paid off. It was the single greatest moment of my sports life.

The umpire had other ideas. “Strike three!” The game ended in a tie.

I walked back to the dugout in a daze, holding back tears as my teammates packed up their bags. It wasn’t just the disappointment of coming up small in a big spot. It was the injustice. I can see the pitch vividly in my mind’s eye like it was yesterday. I am as sure that it was off the plate as I am that the sky is blue. I deserved to be the hero. Instead I was the goat.

Coach Kevin saw me alone on the bench and wandered over to join me. He was easily three times the size of the kid with the postage-stamp strike zone, and the metal bleacher creaked and jostled under me as he sat down.

He turned to me and said, softly but sternly: “We could have won the game.” Then he stood up and walked away.

Everyone’s an optimist on Opening Day, which for most MLB teams was last week. The excitement was palpable, even amid the DDoS-esque deluge of horrors going on in the world. It signals the approach of summer and the resumption of a bedrock day-to-day rhythm. It is the moment when sports fans watch the greatest game in human history with the rosiest-tinted glasses. It is the time when we experience baseball with the peak collective sense of childlike wonder.

It occurred to me that our goal as baseball fans ought to be to maintain this magical feeling for as long as possible.

This thought brought me back to that fateful insult from Coach Kevin. It wasn’t just a cruel thing to say to a nine-year-old. It was also someone who presumably considers himself a baseball fan — he devoted his summer to teaching kids how to play it — going out of his way to discourage a young person’s enthusiasm for the sport.

In retrospect it’s amazing that that night didn’t turn me off of baseball altogether.

Baseball, the famous saying goes, is designed to break your heart. It’s true that eventually. But in the words of Mitch Hedberg, the first and the middle part are amazing — if we allow them to be.

Over the course of the next few months, your team will suffer tough losses, blown saves, and managerial mistakes. You will be temped to rant, to curse, to turn off the TV in frustration. It happens to the best of us. But I urge you not to dwell on the negativity. Think of the coaches or elders who taught you to love this beautiful game: the Chaz of your own childhood. Stay with the joy and enthusiasm of that first crack of the bat and pop of the mitt.

Maybe then we can make this Opening Day feeling last all season long.

There was just one catch: I had never made a lasagna before.

Dozens of deliveries later, suffice to say I’ve figured it out. I can’t tell you that my version is particularly novel or better than your nonna’s, but it’s at least pretty good and it’s surprisingly easy to make. I started with the recipe from Lasagna Love founder Rhiannon Menn and gradually added my own twists, including inspirations from a spinach-and-ricotta pasta that my mom frequently makes, and the signature sweet sausage and basil under the cheese from The Sopranos’ infamous “Carmela’s lasagna.”

I firmly believe that the best lasagna is the one you actually make, which means taking shortcuts that I normally wouldn’t include in a public-facing recipe, but have enabled me to turn making multiple deliveries a week into a routine. (This is why I haven’t had much time for writing lately.) I wish I could always use my homemade meat sauce in my lasagne, but that would inflate the pre-bake prep time from 20 minutes to several hours, and the store-brand sauce that costs less than $3 for the jumbo bottle is pretty decent. Pre-shredded mozzarella melts almost as well as if you had cut it up yourself. And with apologies to any Italians reading this, jarred parmesan works just fine as the tertiary cheese flavor in the dish. The trick is jazzing it up with other thoughtful but simpler touches, like infusing spinach and parmesan into the ricotta and tucking basil leaves under the bubbling mozzarella, so it still tastes unmistakably homemade.

I’m calling this recipe “Do Something” Lasagna, because the phrase has been a key motivation for my volunteer work in multiple ways:

• In a time when so many people are struggling, bringing a hot meal to a neighbor is a simple way to do something to lend a hand and build community.

• Making and delivering lasagna gives you a chance to do something besides staring at your phone and doomscrolling.

• When you beg your elected officials to please, for the love of all that is decent, do something to obstruct the ongoing assault on constitutional rights, civil liberties, and basic principles of good governance, you can say with a straight face that are you are doing more to better the world than they are.

The recipe below is doubled by default, so it makes two lasagne: one for you, and one for someone else who could use a hot meal, whether as part of an organized process or because you know your neighbor could really use one. Or you can work efficiently and make two to donate at a time! At the risk of sounding preachy, volunteering for Lasagna Love is far and away the best thing I have done over the last few months, both in terms of doing good and as an outlet for my own shock and despair. I hope you enjoy the recipe either way, though if you have the wherewithal to do so it would warm my heart to learn that some Lewsletter readers were moved to sign up too.

As an added bonus, if you volunteer regularly, you’ll also become the kind of person who can whip up a lasagna from mere muscle memory, which is a very cool and useful life skill to have. Like when you’re trying to figure out what to bring to an Oscars party, and you have a last-minute vision to make a “Lasagn-al Gaib.” (I made everyone acknowledge the pun before they could have any.)

“Do Something” Lasagna

This approachable take on the Italian classic will provide cheesy comfort for your family — and someone else’s. Makes two half-tray pans of lasagna, enough to serve 15 to 20 people.

Ingredients

• 1 pound sweet Italian sausage (no casings)

• 1 pound lean ground turkey

• 2 large (45 oz) jars tomato sauce

• 1 cup water

• 2 pounds ricotta cheese

• 1 pound frozen spinach, thawed and drained

• 2 cups grated parmesan

• 2 boxes no-boil lasagna noodles (you may not use them all, depending on the size and shape)

• 2 pounds shredded mozzarella cheese

• A handful of fresh basil leaves, washed

Steps

1. Heat a deep skillet or heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high. Add sausage and cook, stirring frequently and crumbling the meat into small pieces. Once meat is browned and cooked through, scoop it into a bowl with a slotted spoon, leaving a little bit of rendered fat in the pot.

2. Using the same pot, add the turkey and cook, stirring frequently and crumbling the meat as finely as possible, until meat is browned and cooked through.

3. Return the cooked sausage to the pot and add tomato sauce. Pour a 1/2 cup water into each empty sauce jar, shake to loosen the remaining sauce, and add into the pot. (The extra water helps the noodles cook.) Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce starts to simmer.

4. In a large bowl, combine ricotta, spinach, and parmesan until well mixed.

5. In two deep half-tray (12" x 10" inches) pans, layer the ingredients in the following order:

   1. 1/4 of the sauce (about 2 cups per pan)

   2. A layer of pasta (probably 3 noodles per pan, depending on the size and shape)

   3. 1/2 of the ricotta mixture (about 2 cups per pan)

   4. 1/4 of the mozzarella (about 1 cup per pan)

   5. Another 1/4 of the sauce

   6. Another layer of noodles

   7. The rest of the ricotta mixture

   8. Another 1/4 of mozzarella

   9. Another 1/4 of the sauce

   10. Another layer of noodles

   11. The rest of the sauce

   12. The basil

   13. The rest of the mozzarella (this layer is thicker than the previous ones)

6. Tent with foil and bake at 375º F for 30 minutes.

7. Remove foil and bake for another 30-40 minutes, or until cheese is golden brown and bubbly. (When you the sight of the cheese bubbles makes you gasp involuntarily, it’s done.)

Additional Tips

• Crumble the meat as finely as you can, as the chunks may make it hard to assemble the layers later. (This is why I use only one pound of meat per pan.)

• You can prepare the sauce the day before and keep it refrigerated until you’re ready to assemble the lasagna. If you have quart-sized takeout containers lying around, store the sauce in those and it will be pre-portioned for assembly — one container equals one layer (half a carton per pan).

• Place large baking sheets under the trays to prevent sauce and cheese spilling inside your oven.

• Most of the ingredients are shelf-stable or freezable, so if making lasagna becomes a habit, you can save a lot of money by buying supplies in bulk at a wholesale club or when they are on sale. These ingredients would cost somewhere between $25 and $30 per lasagna if I bought them in single-pan increments at a single supermarket, but I spend only about $20 per lasagna by buying a few trays’ worth at a time where I’ve found the prices are cheapest. (God bless Market Basket.)

For Dietary Restrictions

The joys of comfort food ought not be bound by allergies or dietary preferences. I’m not a nutritionist, but I take pride in making lasagna as inclusive as possible for the folks I deliver to. Here are some of the tricks I’ve learned from helping people navigate their food restrictions:

• Gluten-free: Use gluten-free noodles or replace pasta with thin-sliced eggplant or zucchini.

• Lower carbohydrates: Use whole wheat or gluten-free noodles, or replace some or all pasta layers with thin-sliced eggplant or zucchini. You can also look for no-sugar-added sauce or replace it with plain canned crushed or diced tomatoes.

• Lower cholesterol: Replace the sausage with additional lean ground turkey, reduce or omit the ricotta, and omit the lower layers of mozzarella (or reduce the cheese and augment with grated squash).

• Lower salt: Replace the sausage with additional turkey or other unseasoned ground meat, and reduce or omit the parmesan. You can also look for no-salt-added sauce or replace it with plain canned crushed or diced tomatoes.

• Vegetarian: Omit the sausage and turkey, or replace them with sautéed mushrooms or crumbled plant-based meat substitute. You can also compensate for the protein with some extra ricotta.