The Athletic

So, first of all, apologies are in order. I am on the road for my book, The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini, not sure if I mentioned this before. The tour is going really well. Tonight — this is Tuesday, Oct. 29 — I am in New York, at the Mysterious Bookshop (58 Warren Street) with the incredible Joshua Jay. Seriously, if you happen to be in New York, come on out — not just for me (though I’d love to see you) but also because Josh is one of the great magicians in the world, and his show Six Impossible Things is sold out nightly. This is an amazing chance to see him do a little magic. And he’s also the greatest guy, we’ll have a lot of fun talking about Houdini and magic and wonder.

Sorry, I was getting ready to apologize …

But before I do that, I do have to tell you one more book thing: The Life and Afterlife got an extraordinary review in The Sunday Times of London. I mean: Extraordinary. I mean, an “I would have never been this nice to me” kind of review. This is like one of those bigger than life author moments, to not only get a review in The Sunday Times (my first!) but to get one that actually has the word “Brilliant” in the headline.

I’m overwhelmed, really.

Anyway, the apology, all this stuff has made me less than vigilant about updating this site here. I have tried to continue writing sports stuff because, I mean, what else would I do? But I have not put the last couple of updates here like I should, and I make no excuses. It’s just my bad. I’ll try to be better.

I wrote about the Browns loss to the Patriots here. The loss was entirely predictable and, yet, something about the way Cleveland lost depressed me more than the usual defeats. I show my cards on coach Freddie Kitchens. I think unless he finds his sea legs over the next few weeks — and I very much hope he does — he should probably be a one-and-done coach.

And I’ll just share this though it probably is outdated. I wrote about how The Nationals are trying to win this World Series in an old-fashioned way: Starting pitching, timely hits, etc. I don’t sense that they are playing with that sense of urgency that winning modern teams play with in the postseason. In part, this is just how they were built. But it’s also true that they have sat back and hoped for the best. That did work in Games 1 and 2, but hasn’t worked since. They need to get Stephen Strasburg to the mound.