Losing My Perpsicacity, July 30, 2025

Good morning and Happy Wednesday! Thanks for starting your day with LMP.

First, a mea culpa from me. My dog was diagnosed with glaucoma last week (she’s 12), and we’ve been back and forth to the vet several times, trying to control her pain and save her eye. For that reason, I wound up writing the newsletter earlier than usual and scheduling it to post in the morning. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal, except the news about both Ryne Sandberg’s passing and the Manhattan shooting broke after I had finished the newsletter and put it to bed. I meant to get back to it, but I spent most of the rest of the night researching “glaucoma in dogs” and looking for information on how to make her more comfortable.

For those of you who don’t know, I transitioned from law to sports media via my old Cubs blog, A League of Her Own, which I launched in 2006. That was how I got noticed by the Chicago Tribune and WGN Radio, and it led to me working for 670 The Score, the Cubs’ flagship station, as a daily host. I was working there when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, and I’ll never forget being able to say “The Chicago Cubs are the World Series Champions” during my first shift on-air the next day. I couldn’t get through it without my voice breaking.

I’ve been lucky enough to get to co-host with and interview some Cubs legends during my time, including Pat Hughes, Andre Dawson, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, Kyle Schwarber (don’t you dare say he’s not a legend!), Ben Zobrist (my favorite Cub to talk to), and Ryne Sandberg.

I fell in love with baseball during the 1986 World Series, and cheered on the Mets (I know, I know) for a few years, which was entirely the fault of a young Ron Darling. My mom’s family is from the North Side (Damen and School), and my dad is from the West Side, so Cubs baseball was already in my blood. I started listening to WGN Radio regularly, and by 1988, I was a full-blown Cubs fanatic.

In ‘87, the Cubs were led by two future Hall of Famers, Andre Dawson and Ryne Sandberg. It was impossible to watch Sandberg play and not admire the way he went about the game. He was a lifetime .285 hitter, but he also hit 282 home runs (40 in 1990 alone) and had an OBP of .344. He led all NL players in hits from 1983 to 1992.

Sandberg was an excellent hitter, but he was a wonder on defense. By the time the Cubs made a playoff run in 1989, “Sandberg to Dunston to Grace” was as talked about in Chicago as “Tinkers to Evers to Chance.” Sandberg made 10 All-Star Teams and won nine Gold Gloves and seven Silver Sluggers. He was one of the few Cubs players I ever saw get cheers from Cardinals fans. It was impossible not to respect Ryne Sandberg’s game, how hard he worked, and his steady, calm presence in the dugout.

I got to host two half-hour radio blocks with Ryne Sandberg at two separate events. I was nervous, but he seemed more nervous. I got the sense that he was most comfortable when he was talking about baseball, rather than about himself. He was a wealth of baseball knowledge, and he happily took calls from listeners for nearly the entire time, explaining the intricacies of the game to them and pointing out things that even lifelong viewers might not have noticed with his trademark graciousness and patience.

What I remember most about Ryne Sandberg was his kindness and professionalism. The perfect gentleman, he didn’t even flinch at doing a half hour on baseball with a woman, which is not something I can say for every athlete I hosted with. He was quiet and a bit shy, and very humble, precisely the way he appeared the hundreds of times I’d seen him interviewed. It was clear he loved baseball in the way few people do, and he lit up when talking about it. I’ve never been a fan of the saying that someone “played the game the right way,” mainly because it too often seeks to denigrate the overflowing joy that players from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean play with, but if there is a “right” way to play the game, Ryne Sandberg embodied it.

Sandberg had been fighting prostate cancer for some time, so his passing wasn’t a huge surprise, but he was taken from baseball far too soon at age 65. His Hall-of-Fame induction speech in 2005 was an all-timer. Take a few minutes and give it a listen. MLB also put up a great tribute video over on YouTube.

RIP, Ryno. May all the ground balls in heaven be easily scoopable.

Today: NFL will never get it; Trump’s trip to Scotland; Pam Bondi targets Judge Boasberg; Horror stories emerge out of Gaza; and The High Note.

Here we go.

The NFL will never get it

When I heard that someone had entered the building in Manhattan where the NFL was headquartered and shot five people, I kid you not, my first thought was “I wonder if it was a former player with CTE.”

Alleged shooter Shane Tamura was not a former NFL player, but he did have a documented history of mental illness and mentioned CTE in a note found by the NYPD. Tamura killed four people and gravely injured another.

Tamura was 27 years old, and he played football from 2nd grade through high school. In recent years, CTE has been found in much younger athletes than previously expected. In 2023, a study of 152 brains of deceased athletes under the age of 30 found that 41 percent showed signs of CTE. In a world where kids start playing tackle football at age 6 (like mine did — here’s a piece I wrote about it for WaPo), we are increasingly seeing CTE in younger and younger people. Tamura’s brain will reportedly be checked for CTE during his autopsy, the only current method of diagnosing the disease.

Contrary to popular belief, CTE is not caused by concussions — that’s post-concussion syndrome, an entirely separate affliction. CTE is caused by repeated sub-concussive blows, the kind every football player gets dozens of times throughout a game. The NFL can bang on about special helmets all it wants, but as one neurologist told me, there is nothing you can put on the outside of your head to protect the inside of your head. People suffer severe brain trauma in car accidents where their head doesn’t even hit anything. Sub-concussive blows are a problem for the NFL, because the entire game is premised on them. How do you remove the hits without changing the game entirely? Do we revert to flag football? No one seems to want that, though it would be far kinder to the players. I know one former NFL player who told me he was having CTE symptoms even before he retired from the game.

But the CTE controversy aside, I have a different bone to pick with the NFL, which has continually tracked to the right, courting the MAGA crowd with the ever-present military displays, removing the words “End Racism” from the endzones, and ending diversity programs. The avatar for NFL fans in general is the Kansas City Chiefs, whose fans unabashedly do a tomahawk chop and who booed the National Moment of Unity during the 2020 season opener. (I’m sorry, Kansas City residents. I do love your town otherwise!)

Guys like NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the billionaire owners who pay him (the majority of whom donate to right-wing politicians) will never make the connection between the politics they fund and a mentally ill man being able to get his hands on a weapon (and a concealed carry permit) and showing up hell-bent on killing their employees.

Shane Tamura had two documented “mental health holds” in Nevada in 2022 and 2024. Yet no one ever thought to revoke his concealed carry permit, which he obtained in 2022. We don’t yet know how Tamura was able to obtain the gun he used, but he had a friend purchase the “lower receiver,” which held all the parts of this Franken-gun together.

No one in the United States needs a gun like this, nor should they be allowed to own one. There is one party in this country that has advocated for gun control, and one party that has bent over backwards to thwart gun control at every turn. Guess which one NFL owners have donated the most to?

Here’s a handy-dandy chart you can use. Search “NFL” in the box provided. In 2024, a USA Today analysis found that 83 percent of the money donated by NFL owners went to conservative politicians or causes, almost certainly including politicians or groups opposed to gun control.

Guess how much Trump’s trip to Scotland cost?

This week, Donald Trump has been in Scotland, cutting a ribbon at his new golf course and being caught cheating at golf. That strikes me as an entirely private endeavor, not one related to his actual job as President of the United States. But apparently that, like everything else, no longer matters.

From Rolling Stone.

So, how much have Americans paid for Trump’s trip to open his private business venture? Somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million, including footing the bill for Don Jr. and Eric.

As of July 20, Trump had played golf 43 out of his first 184 days in office, to the tune of $60.2 million in taxpayer money.

Pam Bondi goes after Judge Boasberg

In news that will surprise no one, US Attorney General Pam Bondi (again, can’t believe that’s a thing I have to write) continues to be absolutely terrible. What has she done now, you ask? Well, she’s set her sights on one of our favorite federal jurists, Judge James Boasberg.

So what did Boasberg say that was so improper and inappropriate?

Oh. So, the truth. That tracks.

Horror stories continue to emerge from Gaza

These stories are upsetting, so think about your mental health before reading.

What is happening to journalists in Gaza has been systemically ignored by the media. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), reporters in Gaza are literally being starved, alongside the general populace:

According to multiple sources, 232 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 — an average of 13 per month. According to Al Jazeera, “More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia and the United States war in Afghanistan combined, the report published on Tuesday found.”

Now, Israel is refusing to allow journalists to shoot images of aid to Gaza, threatening to stop the aid altogether if they do so.

Worst of all, a US soldier recounted to Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), watching Israeli forces shoot and kill a five-year-old Palestinian child moments after the child had kissed his hands in thanks for the food he was given.

If you can stomach it, you can watch the entire interview here.

I have nothing more to add, except that we are all complicit in this genocide.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

Some days, you report on news that’s so bad, you don’t know what else to say. So here’s the PS22 Chorus singing Yusuf/Cat Stevens:

May these kids do a better job of protecting the vulnerable than we have.