Nathan's Personal Blog

It's 11:07pm. I'm sitting on the couch in the house I grew up in watching two women I haven't heard of until this week play each other in a tight U.S. Open match. I woke up at 6:30am today, took maybe a 15 minute nap around 9:30am, and had a relatively good Saturday in my opinion. I  really should be ready to head upstairs, get a good night's sleep and enjoy not having to work in two days because of the long weekend. But I can't. Why can't I? Because I'm in a thought spiral (thank you John Green for naming that concept) regarding athletics.  I played competitive sports from the time I was about 9 years old. For a while, I played baseball, hockey, and soccer until I decided that I needed to pick two of those sports to focus on and I was worst at soccer out of the three. I had varying levels of success in both baseball and hockey over the years. Nothing more than a district championship though for my town (baseball when I was 9, and hockey as a sophomore in hi...

This is a very niche thing to blog about, since international baseball is not very popular and has struggled to gain any kind of momentum for some reason, or a number of reasons to be more accurate. I'm not here to talk about that though, I'm here to ask what the heck is going on with the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC)?  The WBC is sort of baseball's attempt at a World Cup-type tournament, except it has not been as successful and it is not as historic. The first one was in 2006, and in four tournaments, Japan has won two with the Dominican Republic and the United States each winning one. There was supposed to be a tournament in 2021, but COVID hit, so now it is in 2023. As such, lots of news about who will play and who the coaches will be is coming out now.  The players aren't anything that shocking, Mike Trout is in for the U.S., Trevor Story is in, and I'm sure other stars will likely declare their interest soon. What I'm curious about is why on Earth so ma...

Ummm...apparently the Little League World Series (LLWS) has restructured the way their bracket will be set up this summer and I sort of hate it, so let's discuss. First of all, this is being written from the perspective of someone who grew up idolizing the teams in the late-2000s LLWS and dreaming about hitting a walk-off homerun like the kid for Warner Robbins in 2007. To me, the New England region will always be maroon, black, and white, the West will always be UCLA-blue and gold, and the Southeast will always be gold and red.  I know that was not always the case, and I know it is not the case right now. In fact, one of my most vivid memories of the LLWS was Nick Pratto hitting a walk-off single for the yellow and green West region to win the world championship in 2011. I also know that there was a time (until 2001 to be precise) that there were only four regions per bracket rather than eight U.S. and eight international teams. For reference, the regions I am used to are: U.S. Ne...

Okay we have some baseball uniform news!  The MLB has just announced the uniforms that will be worn in the 2022 Field of Dreams game on Thursday between the Red and the Cubs and there is a lot to break down! This is the MLB's version of the NHL's Winter Classic in a way. The uniforms are throwbacks and the concept behind the game is to bring it back to a simpler time before guys were turning down $400 million contracts and throwing 95+ miles-per-hour. As always, huge shoutout to the guys at sportslogos.net (especially Chris Creamer) for the news and graphics.  The first thing that really jumps out to me is that both of these jerseys are white! Okay, well technically, the Cubs' jersey is cream, or ivory, or off-white (depending what you want to call it). Both jerseys are basically white though, which is probably the first time in a while that this will happen. I do not quite get why  this is the case, as other-colored jerseys have existed for a while, even if that other c...

 The logo for the 2023 MLB All-Star game has just been announced! As always, I am getting the news from Chris Creamer on Twitter (@sportslogosnet) . This will be a pretty short review, since it is just a logo, but I wanted to give my thoughts on it real quick.  I think this logo is absolutely gorgeous. I am a big fan of the Mariners' color palette and I think they look great on this logo. I love that the main accent on this logo is the nature that people associate with the Pacific Northwest. It's a place I've always wanted to go, and this logo just further enhances that desire. Not to be forgotten though, is the Space Needle in the top left! I really like that they didn't have the needle be the main focus of this logo. Of course, it is an iconic landmark in Seattle, but I think having it be off to the side was a really good decision.  This is a logo that would look great on jerseys in next year's game, on the caps they'll wear, and on the promo materials. As muc...