Topic: Baseball

Rick Rhoden had a solid career as a pitcher (and an exceptionally good hitter, as pitchers go) in the Major Leagues. But there was something else, something harder to describe, that places him among Bruce Jenner and Jan-Michael Vincent in the ranks of the world's finest athletes.

The Minnesota Twins are not the worst organization in baseball, or the unluckiest or most poorly managed. They are, however, an organization in the middle of an existential crisis that's now two decades old, and which shows little sign of working itself out. In part two of this two-part look at their two decades of meh, a look at what's been lost, and what's at risk.

Baseball's trade-deadline season is all about speculation, which is fun enough. But with Ichiro on the Yankees, a world of horrible new possibilities has opened up. Yakkin' stares into the abyss, and the abyss smells like Nick Swisher.

"High and Outside" is a self-described baseball noir that's just entering the home stretch of its Kickstarter campaign. It is also directed by the son of former Toronto Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson, and counts among its cast former Jesus Lizard maniac David Yow, porn starlet Scarlett Fay, and veteran character actors Geoffrey Lewis and Eddie Jemison. So, yeah, it seemed worth looking into.