Dale Johnson

@HiMyNameIsSeton @dpshow @Airstream_Inc Are you still in Palm Springs? This place is amazing roosterandthepig.com

Day 1 of the Road To The Final is in the books. Los Angeles > Palm Springs in an @Airstream_Inc Rangeline. Click the link in my bio to follow along. If you know a can’t miss stop drop it in the comments. #AirstreamRoadToTheFinal #Airstream #Rangeline #RoadTrip #Travel #Soccer

When you’re trying to be a cinephile but also have a baseball obsessed 3 year old.

@ButcherBoy415 His give-a-shit meter is off the charts. Love how competitive he is. But can’t have the whole infield locked down to long term deals. Casey needs a spot on the dirt. If Adames or Chapman got moved I would be more inclined to try and keep him.

I do not wanna trade Luis Arreaz

@RobertBingisser @joonlee Totally agree. Just feel like the story is framed in a way to make it seem like Harper worked directly with FanDuel vs. him just being negligent in filming cameo vids.

@thedalejohnson @joonlee Seems likely but maybe if you’re Bryce Harper you just don’t film that one. If he didn’t know the details between the guy and FanDuel, ok, but just don’t film any that reference sports gambling or a specific company at all. Definitely not a good look no matter what

An important story on the state of sports gambling and how intertwined they are with the leagues and players

@bcclist @HoustonXans @HatinMyHand @phillysport @FanDuel @FDSportsbook @BookCameo or some very easy to use video editing software.

@HoustonXans @thedalejohnson @HatinMyHand @phillysport @FanDuel @FDSportsbook Wouldn’t be an individual employee that did this! Requires some SERIOUS cash from @FDSportsbook to get that @BookCameo logo removed/replaced by @FanDuel’s.

Terry Thompson lost $1.5 million on bets he placed with FanDuel. The company gave him VIP treatment — including a personalized video message from the Phillies' Bryce Harper.

@bcclist @HatinMyHand @phillysport @FanDuel @FDSportsbook Not saying he had to do it or was smart of him to gloss over the fact that the script said FanDuel. But the reporting is shaped to make it seem like he worked directly with FanDuel for the video, which doesn't seem accurate.

@thedalejohnson @HatinMyHand @phillysport @FanDuel @FDSportsbook Cameo's terms of service give the talent 100% control over what they record.

@HoustonXans @bcclist @HatinMyHand @phillysport @FanDuel @FDSportsbook Totally. No way am I defending FanDuel at all. But the headline getting pulled from this story is that Harper sent a gambling addict a personal video when he was (seemingly) unaware of the layers to all of this.

@thedalejohnson @bcclist @HatinMyHand @phillysport @FanDuel @FDSportsbook Isn’t it just as problematic that FanDuel has employees who are willing to reach that level of creativity and personalization for individual gambling addicts

@bcclist @HatinMyHand @phillysport @FanDuel @FDSportsbook What it seems like: the FanDuel employee requested the cameo, and they write the script of what Harper says. Should he have paused when he was reading the script and it said FanDuel, probably. But that’s a lot different of an accusation than him working directly with FanDuel.

@thedalejohnson @HatinMyHand @phillysport He explicitly cites @FanDuel @FDSportsbook.

@HatinMyHand @phillysport Feels to me like the video is alleging Harper worked directly with FanDuel to make the video which doesn’t seem accurate.

@thedalejohnson @phillysport That’s the entire point of the video; in no world should a sportsbook be able to buy an MLB player video off cameo

@NickEsOnMyFeet @jaycaspiankang And the most ironic thing about parents chasing college scholarships is that they will have potentially paid more in these club fees than what a low end college scholarship covers for the kid.

@jaycaspiankang @jaycaspiankang one of the big problem is college sports. America loves it too much but so many parents are playing for that. As long as that system exists parents will shell out tons of money to get their children that clout. That exists in all American sports.

One thing that’s discussed in the book is that the problem w youth soccer is that everyone is training ‘like a pro’ whereas in other countries, the top 1% or so go to academies and everyone else plays grassroots which is either free or about 300 bucks a year. Those academy kids have pretty sad outcomes on the whole. In the USA, MLS academies are much smaller in number and also less part of the culture, you have no system to definitively separate the 1% from the 5% or even the 50% at, say, u9. That isn’t really a problem in of itself but what it has encouraged is the expansion of pay to play, which has coincided w the gutting of rec leagues. Parents feel like there is no ‘normal’ option bc rec feels inadequate bc all the kids w a shred of talent went to pay to play. But pay to play seems absurdly expensive and time consuming. Most parents given that choice will choose the ‘better’ option and that’s how you have clubs that have 4 ‘competitive’ u9 teams. To justify the cost and to compete w the other clubs in the area, those kids will then train all the time and get the nicest 450 dollar uniform kits and most importantly, do everything to win bc that’s how they attract more customers. That means mostly picking fast big kids and kicking it long or in some instances using ‘tactics’ that 9 year olds cannot and should not be thinking about. The time and financial investment leads to toxic behavior throughout the system and the kids suffer from it, burn out, etc. More pro academies where the kids are seen as investments to be sold down the line (but don’t have to pay) would probably help USMNT. And a more robust public rec system wouldn’t make the cut off age at 8 for when parents have to decide whether they want to possibly bankrupt themselves to chase a dream. This would allow late bloomers to enter the pool of the 1% and possibly become the 0.1% (it is true in soccer a late bloomer probably means like 11 years old just bc you do need to learn ball skills very early which is why it’s ridiculous these clubs motivated by winning are just playing hoofball to the fastest kid). But ultimately the problem is that outside of immigrant areas we don’t have a culture where every 7 year old is doing tricks in front of the project buildings in les banlieues or in the favelas or whatever. If a kid that age wants to play soccer their parents have to find them a game and eventually they end up paying 3000 so their kid can be on the c team and r FC Columbus Ohio or whatever. Pay to play is not going away if you start opening a lot of NWSL or second div boys academies (those teams can’t afford to run those academies anyway so the question is mostly moot). And it is its own problem (a lot of this is discussed in the book as well as the history of how we got here). We should fix the public rec/grassroots system bc it’s the right thing to do and would make 95% of parents happier and would allow kids to learn to love the game and not have it be their job starting at age 9.

@MintBlitz Hell yeah

Marathon players will see this and be like hell yeah

@BrunoLouviers Holy misi!

I think that was enough MRTN for the rest of the week!

@HiMyNameIsSeton Dude great job with this

@MexPlays__ 😭😭

Calus seeing Strand, Stasis, and Prismatic for the first time.

Not pictured: Hudson absolutely frying me and the Bungie team in Heavy Metal

@JoshDubowAP @timkawakami Is this some sorta reverse Pablo Sandoval curse happening?

The Giants have played 162 games since Rafael Devers made his debut for them on June 17, 2025. They have a 69-93 record since then for 4th worst mark in majors in that span

I honestly didn’t know @USMNT was allowed to play like this 🇺🇸

❤️❤️❤️ this community never ceases to amaze us. Thank you all!