[guest post by Dana]

Life imitating art:

Major League Baseball is headed to Dyersville, Iowa, in 2020. The Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees announced on Thursday that the two teams will play an official big-league game at the Field of Dreams movie site on Aug. 13, 2020. The game will take place at 6 p.m. and be televised on FOX.

“It’s definitely exciting,” said Roman Weinberg, the director of operations for Go The Distance Baseball, which owns the Field of Dreams movie site. “There’s nothing more American than the Field of Dreams and America’s pastime.”

Now, they’re joining hands for one big game at the beloved movie’s site. The movie, which hit theaters in 1989, centers around the 1919 White Sox and Shoeless Joe Jackson. Jackson, who was banned by MLB along with seven of his teammates for his alleged role in the White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series, inspires an Iowa farmer, played by Kevin Costner, to build a baseball field in Iowa.

[…]

The field has since become a tourist attraction over the years with fans from across the globe flocking to the Iowa cornfield to see it. Now, a pair of MLB teams will be coming. The game will take place at the site of the movie but not on the iconic diamond, Weinberg said.

“MLB plans to build actually an 8,000 seat ballpark that will allow fans to experience the movie site,” Weinberg said.

Build it and they will come, indeed.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

[Headline from DRJ]

No, this isn’t a post for Jokes about Trump. This is about an article that begins Trump cracks jokes …:

Trump cracks jokes about Equinox scandal, kamikaze pilots at Hamptons fundraiser

***

Trump also made fun of US allies South Korea, Japan and the European Union — mimicking Japanese and Korean accents — and talked about his love of dictators Kim Jong Un and the current ruler of Saudi Arabia.

He started by saying how the EU had not paid its share to NATO and he insisted it does so.

Talking about South Korea, Trump said it makes great TVs and has a thriving economy, “So why are we paying for their defense. They’ve got to pay.” He then mimicked the accent of the leader Moon Jae-in while describing how he caved in to Trump’s tough negotiations.

On his remarkable friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, “I just got a beautiful letter from him this week. We are friends. People say he only smiles when he sees me.

“If I hadn’t been elected president we would be in a big fat juicy war with North Korea. “

Turning to Japan, Trump then put on a fake Japanese accent to recount his conversations with Shinzo Abe over their conversations over trade tariffs.

Trump spoke about his friendship with Abe and how fascinated he was with Abe’s father, who had been a kamikaze pilot. Trump asked Abe if the kamikaze pilots were drunk or on drugs. Abe said no, they just loved their country. Trump remarked, “Imagine they get in a plane with a half a tank of gas and fly into steel ships just for the love of their country!”

Joe Biden likes to imitate Asians, too.

— DRJ

[Headline from DRJ]

Daily Mail — The two prison guards who failed to check on Jeffrey Epstein every 30 minutes were both ‘working long overtime shifts at the understaffed jail’ on the night he killed himself, sources claim:

Ttwo prison guards at Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan jail who reportedly failed to follow procedure and check on prisoners every 30 minutes were both working long overtime shifts the night the pedophile took his own life, a source has revealed.

The former financier, 66, was found hanging in his prison cell shortly before 7am and was rushed to nearby New York Presbyterian-Lower Manhattan hospital where he was pronounced dead.

A prison official told The New York Times  one of the guards was working his fifth straight day of overtime at the short staffed jailhouse while the second corrections officers was had been forced to work overtime.

So we may have tired and unhappy guards. There’s more:

The decision to remove Epstein, who was possibly the most high-profile inmate in the federal jail system, from suicide watch has both baffled former wardens and veterans of the federal prison system alike. 

A separate source revealed to DailyMail.com that Epstein actually told prison guards and fellow inmates that he believed someone had tried to kill him in the weeks before his death.

— DRJ

[guest post by JVW]

Over at National Review Online, Jay Nordlinger has a post on an ugly event that occurred at a recent Texas Rangers ballgame:

Apparently, a man at a Texas Rangers game was taunting an Hispanic family, in a racist way. He has now been banned from the stadium. You can read about the episode here.

[. . .]

The Rangers offered the harassed family free tickets to another game. Moreover, a season-ticket holder offered his front-row seats to them, for another game. “I wanted to affirmatively do something and take some form of action,” he said. “I didn’t want to just read the story and think, ‘Ah, that’s terrible, I can’t believe someone did that.’”

The Rangers did the right thing by permanently banning the obnoxious jerk from the stadium. But the team also did something that I find equally good in an action that they decided not to take: they did not name the man publicly. We all know in this day and age of social media mobs that there are people who would want this guy fired from his job, thrown out of his home, shamed in front of his family, publicly doxxed so he could be the target of righteous harassment, and all of the other ways that we exact our full revenge on those whom are annoying in a particularly galling way.

But to the degree that maybe this man might learn a valuable lesson from all this, I think the Rangers got it just right. Three cheers to them.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Unsurprising:

President Trump on Saturday retweeted a post promoting a conspiracy theory about Jeffrey Epstein’s death.

The tweet, by Twitter user Terrence K. Williams, blamed the death on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Clinton and does not provide evidence.

The tweet included the hashtags #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily, as well as a photo of both the former president and former secretary of State. Conspiracy theories linking the death to both the Clinton and Trump himself trended Saturday on Twitter.

This is not the first time Trump has engaged in promoting unfounded conspiracy theories. Consider birtherism, vaccines and autism, Ted Cruz’s father/Lee Harvey Oswald/JFK, to name a few. [Ed. Trump changed his stance on vaccines when faced with the measles outbreak.]

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

It is the ninth Sunday after Pentecost. Today’s Bach cantata is “Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit” (Make yourself ready, my spirit)

Today’s Gospel reading is Luke 12:32-40:

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Watchfulness

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

The text of today’s piece is available here. It contains these words:

Make yourself ready, my spirit,
be vigilant, plead, and pray,
that the evil time does not
come upon you unexpectedly;
for it is
Satan’s guile
to overcome many righteous people
with temptation.

Happy listening! Soli Deo gloria.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]