The Unpublished

“It’s really simple, actually … it’s just, try and make people happy.”

Are those sad tissues, or happy tissues?

Holy yes.

The gay athlete →

I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.

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Catharsis in Boston's sports cathedral →

After a week that rocked us irrevocably, a day at Fenway helps Boston heal.

“I was just praying,” she said, “that it would have an impact and people would be able to go home with a win and a smile on their face, because of all the tragedy and negative stuff of the past four days.

“I’m just glad for the fans, that they can take that win home.”

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Inequality and New York’s Subway — The New Yorker

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All my thoughts are with my hometown and the people of Boston. It’s a horrific thing that happened. It’s kind of surreal that it happened right there in the middle of the city, a place I’ve been. I used to live about a block from there. The city is really shaken, but it’s an extremely resilient city with lots of tough people. We’ll definitely get through it. It’s almost impossible to process something like that, and on such a special day in Boston, too.

The thing about the marathon is just about everyone there is waiting on a loved one or a friend, or they’re there to cheer on a stranger and support a stranger. And to have someone try to kill and hurt strangers doesn’t make sense. It’s amazing that human beings are capable of both those extremes — there to support strangers, and someone there to hurt strangers. It’s a shocking event, a tragic event, but I know Boston’s tough enough to get through it.

My mom used to run the marathon. She probably ran it a half-dozen times, and her twin sister. So a lot of memories of going to see them run by. Going to a few Patriots Day games, then for a decade going to work to see the game, and I would always leave the game in the seventh inning to go see my brother run by. I’d pull a hat down, hide out, watch him run by, give him a high-five and go back to work.

You see the darkest side of humanity with someone wanting to harm innocent people. And you see the best side of humanity, too, when you see people running toward an explosion like that to help out people who are in harm’s way. It’s not a surprise, knowing the first responders in Boston and the great job they do and the courage they have.

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— Theo Epstein, Cubs president of baseball operations and former Boston Red Sox GM; Epstein’s brother finished running the race about 45 minutes before the explosions 

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I said: ‘You listen to me. You keep your tongue in your month.’ He said, ‘OK, OK, I will.’ So he did it. I had no idea what the kicker was going to be, but I did know from his big [expletive]-eating grin when she pulls away, and also from her reaction — those two shots, I said, I got it, this is going to sing. It was perfect. This magic moment.”

‘The Sandlot’ turns 20: Stories from the cast on the film’s 20th anniversary

Yeah-Yeah: Can you even imagine what it would be like to play baseball lit only by freaking small-town fireworks?
Ham: I thought I was going to die by a baseball.
Benny: Yeah, it was a terrible idea.

Spring Training by the numbers

49 days

3,960 miles on my Nissan Sentra rental car

28 games (nine in Viera, nine in Jupiter, seven in Port St. Lucie, two in Orlando, one in Kissimmee)

164 items filed

And, with that, on to Chicago. Here we go.