Stephen Daugherty

@Xyleniqq Congrats to you and the Mrs.; you've won at life.

My son's baseball coach pulled me aside after practice last spring and told me something I've never repeated until now. My son is sixteen. He's been playing baseball since he was six. He's good. Not scholarship good. Good in the way that matters more, where he's the kid who stays late, who picks up the equipment, who remembers everyone's batting average because he actually cares. His coach called me over after the other parents had left. He's a former minor leaguer. Forties. Direct man. Doesn't say things he doesn't mean. Him: Can I tell you something about your son? Me: Of course. Him: He's not going to make varsity next year. Me: Okay. Him: He's working as hard as anyone I've coached. Harder than most. But the ceiling he has athletically isn't going to get him there. Me: Alright. Him: I know that's hard to hear. Me: It is what it is. Him: That's not what I wanted to tell you. I waited. Him: Three weeks ago one of my other players was having a bad practice. Really struggling. Wanted to quit. He went and sat in the dugout and your son went and sat with him. Me: Okay. Him: I was about to go over. But I stopped because I wanted to see what he'd do. Him: He didn't tell him it would be fine. Didn't give him a speech. He just sat there with him for a few minutes. And then he said something I couldn't hear. And the kid laughed. And they went back out. I didn't say anything. Him: I've been coaching for twenty years. That's not something you can teach. That's character. That's just who someone is. He looked at me. Him: I don't know what you're doing at home but whatever it is, keep doing it. I shook his hand. Got in my car. Sat there. My son came out five minutes later and knocked on the window. Him: Why are you just sitting here? Me: Thinking. Him: About what? Me: Your coach said something nice about you. Him: About my batting? Me: Not about your batting. He got in the car. Me: He told me about the kid in the dugout. He looked uncomfortable the way teenagers do when they're caught doing something good. Him: Tyler was having a bad day. Me: What did you say to him? That made him laugh? He shrugged. Him: I told him he wasn't as bad as he thought he was. And that even if he was, baseball wasn't everything. Me: From the kid who eats baseball? Him: Yeah. Me: Did you mean it? He thought about it. Him: I meant it for him. Me: That counts. We drove home. He was on his phone within two minutes the way they are. But I kept thinking about a sixteen year old boy deciding the right thing to do was sit down next to someone. Not fix it. Just sit. There are grown adults who never learn that. He figured it out at sixteen in a dugout on a Thursday. I didn't say anything to my wife until that night. She listened to the whole thing. When I finished she was quiet. Her: He gets that from you. Me: I'm not like that. Her: You absolutely are like that. Me: I'm not a sit quietly and wait kind of person. Her: You came and sat with me in the hospital when my mother was sick and you didn't say a single word for three hours and it was exactly what I needed. I didn't remember it that way. Her: You just sat. And it was everything. I thought about that. Me: Maybe he gets it from both of us. Her: Maybe. She turned off the light. I lay there thinking about a kid who won't make varsity and a boy who sat with him anyway and whether any of the things that actually matter show up on a roster. They don't. But they show up everywhere else.

@justinboldaji Also not sure Gramps had stretched prior to taking pics, either.

Ochocinco breaking down the athletic failures of a 65 year old man who was trucked by a bison. No other website like it

@gregisenberg Great list; started doing many of them years ago, but never documented….glad I’m not alone.

i keep a running doc called “things i’m not doing anymore” and look at it monthly really simple way to live a happier & more productive life

@danacarvey "Sticks"

This baby horse is a boy. He doesn't have a name yet. Any suggestions?

@IU_Health 12 minutes on hold, then answer with "oops, not sure how you got to scheduling, let me 'transfer you' to billing." Back in the death loop. Hilarious if it were happening to someone else.

@Labcorp 16+ minutes on hold and still no answer 🤣

@Handre Great flick from 2019 called Mr. Jones is worth watching (twice).

Walter Duranty knew people were starving. He wrote that they weren't anyway. From his comfortable Moscow apartment, the New York Times correspondent filed dispatch after dispatch in 1932 and 1933 assuring American readers that talk of famine in Ukraine was, in his words, "an exaggeration or malignant propaganda." Meanwhile, the Holodomor killed somewhere between 3.5 and 7 million people. Stalin requisitioned the grain, sealed the borders of starving villages, and let entire regions collapse into death and cannibalism. Duranty saw the reports. He had the sources. He chose Stalin. Duranty privately told a British diplomat, Sir William Strang, in September 1933 that "as many as 10 million" had likely died. Then he went back to his typewriter and produced the line "there is no actual starvation." He calculated that access to the regime, the famous interviews, the prestige of being the man who explained the Soviet experiment to America, was worth more than the truth. The market he served rewarded him for it. The Pulitzer committee handed him their 1932 prize for correspondence. They have never revoked it. This is what central planning always buys: not just the bodies in the field but the men with pens who explain why the bodies don't count. Every engineered scarcity needs its Duranty. Someone has to stand at the edge of the mass grave and assure the readers back home that the five-year plan is working, that the eggs are necessary for the omelette (his actual phrase). The state directs the grain. The court intellectual directs the narrative. Both jobs pay well. Free market economists spent the entire 20th century explaining that you cannot run an economy by command without producing exactly this: shortage, terror, and a press corps competing to flatter the men who caused it. The famine ended, and the Pulitzer sits on the wall at 620 Eighth Avenue to this day.

@_Drew_McCoy_ Instant follow

I was once playing roulette in Vegas and the croupier's name was Rommel. When my number hit I yelled out, "Rommel, you magnificent bastard!" He had no idea but an old guy in a cowboy hat couldn't stop laughing and threw me a $100 chip. I gave it to Rommel. He was confused but appreciated the tip.

@OleTimeHardball You spelled push-off wrong

The most iconic shot in NBA history

@Super70sSports Irv Cross, you sweet bastard

The 1977 CBS NFL Today intro is fucking spectacular. The plays get progressively more illegal and fucked up to the point I was half expecting some guy to get eaten by a lion on the field. It’s like a Naked Gun bit. Do yourself a favor and watch this.

@its_The_Dr I’ve always known the Finns could Hillbilly if needed, but this is nuts!

Sounds different but Good

@MungoJerryLTD Incredible

There was no wash board on the track, the percussion was created by myself, I used a cabassa, foot stomp on a piece of wood & mouth percussion. The rhythm was emphasised by me playing a Gibson acoustic guitar without using a pick. Paul King emphasised Mike Cole’s stand up bass part by playing a glass jug, Colin Earl played an acoustic grand piano & I also played a 1960 Fender Strat with my fingers through a 1963 Marshall top as well as singing the two vocal tracks. The recording took place in Pye Studio one on an 8 track machine through a Neve desk & Tannoy monitors

@gguworld Sublime drummer, but don’t be silly: Sting was/is good looking, wrote great songs, and had/has an incredible voice (instrument). No clue if his bass was ever plugged in.

People credit Sting for The Police. Watch this and reconsider.

@BrandiKruse @CBSNews Lol, that used to crack me up: I remember, even as a youn man, thinking “he probably has the Sports page in front of him”

I was an intern at @CBSNews when Pelley would fill in for Katie Couric on the evening news. I watched in the control room one day as he directed them to slowly push the shot in on him as he took his glasses off. It was so fake I’ve remembered it for 15 years.

@geraldposner What say you, @smerconish? BTW, I’m a big fan of yours (and TC, of course).

🎥 Want to know why objective journalism is under siege right now? Watch this short clip. Michael Smerconish interviewing James Carville this morning on CNN. It used to be that conservative commentators accused Trump critics of suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome." It was a dismissal. A way to discredit the opposition. Now? One of the Democratic Party's most legendary political consultants isn't just admitting it's real — he's celebrating it. James Carville, on camera: "I have Trump Derangement Syndrome, and I'm trying to get worse." As a journalist, I try to do what @smerconish does — call balls and strikes. I'm an equal opportunity investigator. Republicans and Democrats have both ended up in my crosshairs. On Big Pharma? Both parties are in the industry's lobbying pocket. Full stop. That's not a partisan conclusion — it's where the facts led me. But something has shifted in journalism. Some reporters have now adopted the Carville doctrine: that because they view Trump as a "traitor" and threat to the Republic, trying to be objective is castigated as the moral equivalent of being a "collaborationist" — a reference to those who cooperated with Nazi occupation forces during WWII. Let that sink in. Striving for fairness in reporting is now being compared to collaborating with Nazis. I'm not changing. There's a difference between being an activist and being a journalist. Both are honorable. But they are not the same thing. And pretending they are — or worse, insisting they should be — is how trust in the press collapses entirely. If the facts lead you to a strong conclusion, say it. I do it all the time. But the facts have to lead you there. Not the other way around.

@CRELeasingLawTX Incredible golf scene, too @RTJGolf

Fourth generation Alabamian (turned Texas transplant) here - Alabama is incredibly underrated. I went to an excellent high school with an IB program & more AP classes than one person could take. Beaches, mountains, lakes, a top 50 public university (Auburn - my alma mater. War Eagle! 🦅 🐅), top 100 public university (Alabama), a top 35 med school (UAB), a top 50 law school (Alabama), Huntsville has Boeing, NASA (including Space Camp), the Redstone Federal Arsenal, and the highest PhDs per capita in the nation. Budding food scene. College football is life! People are friendly. You can buy a house for not a ton of money. I could go on!

@FoundersPodcast What # is Phil Knight @RBReich?

I read Shoe Dog for the third or fourth time. This episode will make you want to run through walls. My favorite quotes from the new episode: 1. Somebody may beat me, but they’re going to have to bleed to do it. 2. It was us against the world, and we felt damn sorry for the world. 3. The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us. 4. The roadside was littered with cautious, conservative, prudent entrepreneurs. I wanted to keep my foot pressed hard on the gas pedal. 5. I just didn't want to lose. Losing was death. 6. I was no longer making Nikes; Nikes were making me. 7. The problems never stop. 8. Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment. 9. Our ads didn’t focus on the product, but on the spirit behind the product. 10. Obsessives were the only ones for the job. The only ones for me. 11. It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. 12. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. 13. You are remembered for the rules you break. 14. You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you. 15. Don't settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt. 16. The better you get, the bigger the bull’s-eye. It’s not one man’s opinion; it’s a law of nature. 17. Entrepreneurs have always been outgunned, outnumbered. 18. Front runners always work the hardest, and risk the most. 19. No future, no past. All is now. 20. He always went against the grain. Always. 21. Belief is irresistible. 22. I could not bear the thought of losing. 23. The world is without beauty when you lose. 24. We didn't believe in letting tradition slow you down. 25. Someone somewhere once said that business is war without bullets, and I tended to agree. 26. I was fascinated by leadership under extreme conditions. 27. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. 28. I've never been a multitasker. I wanted to focus constantly on the one task that really mattered. 29. I flat-out didn’t want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. 30. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop. 31. When you make something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. 32. I honestly wish I could do it all over again.

Listening to the @NRO pod in 🇲🇨 and you are correct @RichLowry, we should annex this immediately! 🤣

Delayed taking a cruise my entire life because I'd heard getting on/off was a chaotic cattle call. @VikingCruises proved this to be correct on DAY ONE in our first port, lol. Pay extra for "premium" cruise they said🤣 #Viking #Saturn #Livorno #Fail #cattlecall #choas

@Super70sSports Me hitting the like button on this tweet

Bob Seger is better than Bruce Springsteen. I don’t know how many of you are joining me on this island but I feel like it will be 50% geniuses and 50% guys who make women instinctively lock their car doors.