Latest news with #Hartig
New York Post
2 days ago
- Lifestyle
- New York Post
These young women are doing their part to avoid a baby bust
America's fertility rate is collapsing. But some young women are ready to do their part to avoid a baby bust. The average American woman currently in her peak fertility years (ages 15–49) will have 1.7 children in her lifetime, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. And more Zoomers and Millennials are choosing to forgo kids, citing the financial cost, climate change and career, among other reasons, according to polling. It's a trend that has demographers concerned about the economic and societal repercussions of a shrinking and aging population — a crisis currently crippling Japan and South Korea. Advertisement 11 Ashley Hartig is 29 and already has three children — an experience she said 'provides a lot more joy.' Edward Linsmier for NY Post For Ashley Hartig, the decision to be a young and prolific mom meant resisting 'girl boss' messaging. 'I didn't feel the need to focus on a career. I just had the babies and figured it all out as I went,' Hartig, 29, told The Post. Advertisement She and her husband, Derek, an entrepreneur in the transportation industry, live in Sarasota, Florida, with their 8-year-old son, 5-year-old daughter and 15-month-old son — and they're planning a possible fourth in the next year to give their youngest a sibling near his age. 'I've found a lot more joy because of my children,' she said. 'I literally romanticize everything that happens every single day because everything feels so special when you're sharing it with your own kids.' 11 Ashley and husband Derek share their 8-year-old son, 5-year-old daughter and 15-month-old son. Edward Linsmier for NY Post But starting a family so early with her husband, Derek, wasn't easy. They struggled for a couple years with multiple career changes and lack of home ownership. She says a lot of other young women are attracted to the stay-at-home lifestyle — and often reach out to her on social media to say so — but it's so often out of reach in today's economy. Advertisement 'I think the biggest barrier is definitely financial,' Hartig said. 'A lot of people want to be stay-at-home moms, and that's almost impossible if your husband doesn't have a super secure, high-paying job.' A 2024 Pew survey found that, among those under 50 who say they're unlikely to have kids, 36% cited the affordability of raising a child as the reason why. 11 Hartig says people have 'a lot of opinions' about her decision to have three children in her twenties. Edward Linsmier for NY Post The number one reason, however, was 'they just don't want to' (57%), followed by wanting to focus on other things (44%), concerns about the state of the world (38%), concerns about the environment (26%), lack of the right partner (24%), and simply not liking children (20%). Advertisement Lillian, a 21-year-old who wants 10 kids one day, admits her desire to be a mother is unusual in her generation, which has fallen victim to 'anti-natalist' messaging. 'Gen Z people don't even want to be alive,' said Lillian, who works for an education non-profit and splits her time between Boston. 'Everything feels really meaningless, the economic situation isn't super great, plus there's AI, life just doesn't have meaning, we don't know what the future looks like. People are very depressed, and they are just, like, anti-life.' 11 Lillian, 21, would like to have 10 children one day. Courtesy of Lillian Hartig even hears it from peers who are critical of her choices: 'People have a lot of opinions, saying you're overpopulating the Earth, or they would never want that life, but family is all that really matters in the end, and it's really too bad for them.' Lillian doesn't have a partner yet, but she knows she'd like to have a small army of children. Her main motivation is 'cultural replication.' 'There are things that I like in the world, that I want to see more of in the world, and raising kids who have those beliefs is like a vote for what kind of future you want,' explained the recent Harvard grad, who asked to withhold her last name for professional reasons. 11 Elon Musk, the father of 13 children, is reportedly a pronatalist. Ken Cedeno/UPI/Shutterstock Advertisement The virtues she wants to spread: openness, intellectual curiosity, sense of adventure, resilience and adaptivity. Lillian identifies with the pronatalist movement — a growing group, reportedly including father-of-13 Elon Musk, who believe plummeting birth rates threatens society both culturally and economically — but she says the movement doesn't dictate her life choices. 'I'm more motivated by the idea that the kids that I have will have a shot at helping the world than I am by the birth rate going down and feeling obligated to breed more,' she said. 11 Emma Waters researches pro-family policies at the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation Advertisement 'The pronatalist space broadly tends to frame the issue of having children as a response to larger problems from declining birth rates, like national security, economic health, demographic support, our ability to innovate, et cetera,' Emma Waters, a family policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, told The Post. 'Then there's a very clear religious realm of Catholic and Protestant, Jewish and others, where there's a very clear, faith-based, motivation here.' Naomi Green grew up the seventh of nine children in an Orthodox Jewish family from Morristown, New Jersey — so she knows well the benefits of a big family. 11 Naomi Green says growing up with eight siblings taught her the value of a large family. Courtesy of Naomi Green Advertisement 'I didn't outright love it growing up, but now as an adult, I appreciate it so much more,' Green told The Post. 'I never feel alone in this world. I always have a team. I have someone that I could rely on at any moment.' The 28-year-old Connecticut resident just gave birth to a son a week and a half ago and is also the mom of a 2-year-old daughter. She and her husband Yona, a 30-year-old engineer, plan, 'God willing,' to add another three children to their family. 'I really would love to have my kids feel at school, at home, in life, wherever they are, that they're part of this team and unit, and they're not fighting their battles by themselves,' said Green, who is planning to return to school to become a physician's assistant. 11 Green, who has two children today, would like to have five kids ultimately. Courtesy of Naomi Green Advertisement There is a growing difference between the number of kids that a woman wants, and the number she actually has, dubbed the 'fertility gap.' According to SMU's Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom, the average American woman says she would be happiest with 2.5 children — yet she will most likely only have 1.7. In her work at the Heritage Foundation, Waters, a 27-year-old mother of two looking to form a 'large family' herself, researches pro-family policies to help close this gap. She and her colleagues have honed in on reforming welfare to remove marriage penalties, changing state and federal tax codes to benefit parents and supporting couples struggling with infertility. 11 'Because I live in the city, people think having a lot of kids is crazy,' said Madison Rae, who lives in Tribeca with her three young kids. 11 Rae says being an only child made her want to have a larger family. It might be even harder to change perception. Madison Rae, a Manhattan mom of three who runs the clothing company Tribeca Mom's Club, said she's been the subject of judgement for having a larger family. 'Because I live in the city, people think having a lot of kids is crazy,' she said. 'It's mainly people who don't live in the city, who make comments about the space or the quality of life.' Meanwhile, she said, having big families has become a 'trend' in her posh Tribeca neighborhood. 11 Rae says people stop her in the street to ask about having three kids in New York City. 'So many people I know personally are all of a sudden having a third kid,' the 35-year-old said. 'I just feel like it wasn't a thing a couple of years ago.' Rae, who is married to a finance professional, always wanted a big family because she grew up an only child. She now has a 7-year-old daughter, a 4-year-old son and a 5-month-old son. 'I don't see [having kids] as like a dying thing,' Rae told The Post. When she pushes her stroller downtown, she's regularly stopped by parents thinking of adding to their own families: 'People will literally ask me on the street, like, 'How's three? I feel like I want to do it.''
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Embattled Oakland County judge asked to recuse herself in prosecutor's cases
The Oakland County Prosecutor's Office began to pull its cases from under the thumb of embattled District Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig on the morning of June 10 amid fallout from a formal complaint issued by the state's judicial oversight body earlier this month. During Hartig's June 10 docket at the 52-4 District Court in Troy, the prosecutor's office — which is named in some accusations in the complaint — motioned for Hartig to recuse herself from its first two cases of the day. Hartig declined to do so but was later overruled by her chief judge. So began a dance of repeating the motion on other cases tied to the prosecutor's office and Hartig adjourning them to give the chief judge time to rule, as defendants went back to jail cells or workdays. There was no immediate indication that morning that Chief Judge Travis Reeds would rule differently on the adjourned cases, though Hartig noted from the bench that he had not reviewed a transcript of the hearing with her reasoning for not recusing herself. Bill Mullan, public information officer for Oakland County, confirmed the chief judge's decisions, which attorneys had relayed to Hartig during her docket. Mullan said that the cases would be reassigned at random to other district court judges. More: Complaint: Oakland County Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig created 'climate of fear' Reeds previously said Hartig should be temporarily removed from her docket amid the oversight case, and the county reported he made a request to do so. Hartig has been under fire in recent years, both by Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald and a former court administrator who got a $100,000 settlement in a whistleblower and unlawful termination lawsuit tied to Hartig. Then on June 4, the oversight body, the Judicial Tenure Commission, issued a rare public complaint against the judge. The complaint effectively launches a court-like process that, at its most severe, could result in the Michigan Supreme Court suspending or removing the judge. Key in the complaint: The commission attempted to redact, but left visible in some formats, that a psychological evaluation of the judge in 2024 deemed her at the time to be ''unsafe to practice' due to disruptive behavior and personality dysfunction.' What was deemed at risk was not immediately clear. The commission openly accused Hartig of misdeeds, including creating 'a climate of fear' among workers at the courthouse, improperly dismissing multiple cases without prejudice due to a grudge with the prosecutors tied to scheduling, and mistreating that former court administrator. More: Authority got psych report saying Oakland Judge Hartig was 'unsafe to practice' months ago A spokesperson for the judge, Daniel Cherrin of Royal Oak-based public affairs and communications firm North Coast Strategies, declined to comment on the mental health aspect but issued a statement at the time calling the commission process 'flawed." He said Hartig has patiently waited for the chance to address the allegations against her. In court on June 10, Hartig spoke out against the recusal motions to start. Her docket was underway shortly after 9 a.m., with the judge making mostly default judgments in landlord-tenant issues until a case involving the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office came up. Assistant Prosecutor Bob Zivian came to the podium and when given the chance said for the first time a statement he'd be repeating for numerous cases: that as 'everyone' in the courtroom knew, the Judicial Tenure Commission issued a complaint, that her former and current chief judges were among complainants who could testify against her, and that it was clear the office could not get a fair hearing in the courtroom. 'Respectfully,' he asked her to recuse herself. Hartig, who had nodded at times during the soliloquy, responded using 'respectfully' herself. She said that the prosecutor's office was aware of the oversight investigation before the formal complaint was issued, and argued there had been no problems or concerns raised. She said, in the back-and-forth across two cases, that those in the prosecutor's office issued grievances against her and that she had made attorney grievances against them — specifically McDonald and Assistant Prosecutor Jeffrey Hall — within the last several years. She was unaware of where her attorney grievances landed but said the only thing that changed was the public nature of the complaint against her. Zivian, however, said there were aspects of the complaint that his office was not aware of before. Taylor judge called chief judge names, flipped off security cameras, complaint says 'No teeth': Cases of 2 embattled Michigan judges highlight concerns with accountability Zivian stepped into a private room several times, including with one individual's defense attorney and Chief Public Defender Paulette Loftin. He ultimately relayed to Hartig that he had appealed to Chief Judge Reeds by Zoom and the chief judge ruled in his favor. Between the back-and-forth of the attorneys and the judge, and the judge checking her computer for responses from Reeds, it was said that the chief judge believed Zivian would need to make his motion on every single case. And so, he did. Hartig continued to deny the request, sometimes elaborating for defendants who hadn't been in the courtroom. Defense attorneys were given the chance to weigh in, and then Hartig adjourned their cases so Zivian didn't have to repeatedly jump on a Zoom call after each one to get a ruling from the chief judge. He could do that during the one or two-week adjournment, she said. Zivian was still repeating his refrain for various cases as the clock ticked toward noon. Following one such hearing, Sterling Heights-based attorney Janet Szpond bemoaned that her client's case might have been dismissed if it weren't for the recusal matter. She didn't know the ins and outs discussed in court regarding Hartig's complaint but said her client was accused of failing to return a rental car and was due in court for his preliminary examination. She believed a witness hadn't shown up, so she thought the matter may have been dismissed on June 10. Instead, her client confirmed with her that he could go back to work and jogged off. 'It's just extremely inconvenient,' Szpond said. Oakland County Chief Assistant Prosecutor David Williams said in a call along with his office's public information officer, Jeff Wattrick, that while matters were still evolving, it was not believed there would be great delays in the court system due to the maneuver. He also said Hartig's complaint involved more than just the dismissals involving his office, and his office was unaware of that previously. But the complaint also affirmed the office's stance regarding the judge's bias against them. Wattrick, in a statement, said that people are entitled to cases decided 'based on the law rather than personal animosity.' 'Our only goal in this matter is to ensure justice — that victims' stories are heard and that The People always receive a fair hearing before the court,' he said. Cherrin, Hartig's spokesperson, said that the prosecutor's office had appeared in front of the judge hundreds of times before and that she continues to sit on the bench. He pointed to her comments on the motion made in court. Hartig was given 14 days to issue a formal response to the June 4 complaint. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Embattled Oakland County judge asked to recuse self in multiple cases
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Complaint: Oakland County Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig created 'climate of fear'
This is a breaking news story and will be updated. An Oakland County district court judge is facing a public misconduct complaint with accusations that she failed for months to produce a report on a psychological exam she underwent, bullied court staff, created a climate of fear and improperly dismissed cases. Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig of 52-4 District Court in Troy was formally accused in a complaint announced June 4 by the Judicial Tenure Commission, the state's judicial oversight body. The complaint is the first step in a court-like process, after which the Michigan Supreme Court could decide to suspend or remove a judge, at the most severe. Hartig could not immediately be reached for comment, but a spokesperson, Daniel Cherrin of Royal Oak-based public affairs and communications firm North Coast Strategies, issued a statement on her behalf, saying the judge respects the 'important role' of the commission and has patiently waited for the chance to address the allegations against her. 'After years of inquiry, the Commission has produced a complaint based on disputed claims and a flawed process," he said in the statement, later adding: "The public deserves confidence in both the judiciary and its oversight. That confidence depends on transparency grounded in fact, not fiction. 'Judge Hartig has served the public and the bench for more than a decade with integrity, transparency, and a commitment to justice. The Commission is expected to do the same.' Hartig has 14 days to issue a formal response to the commission. A public complaint itself is a rarity for the tenure commission. Even when judges are found to be at fault, their misconduct cases are most often resolved behind closed doors. The process can also take years. Hartig, however, is the third Michigan judge in recent months to have a formal, public complaint issued against them. The 52-4 District Court handles cases in Troy and Clawson. More: Taylor judge called chief judge names, flipped off security cameras, complaint says The chief judge of Hartig's court ordered that she be restricted to civil, landlord-tenant and small claims cases as of May 27. Following the chief judge's order but before the announcement by the commission, Bill Mullan, public information officer for Oakland County, said in an email that it would let the order speak for itself. "The order was issued to ensure fairness in the courtroom," Mullan said at the time. "We refer any future questions to the Judicial Tenure Commission." Hartig had been under scrutiny by the commission in recent years, the Free Press previously reported. A former chief judge asked the commission to investigate in 2020, according to a filing in federal court by the county amid a lawsuit by a former court administrator. The court administrator in the lawsuit claimed she had been wrongfully terminated after making complaints about Hartig mistreating staff and the public. It came after she cooperated with the commission amid interviews of more than 40 people, she said in the lawsuit. More: Troy court worker who claimed judge was bully, abusive accepts $100K secret settlement More: 'No teeth': Cases of 2 embattled Michigan judges highlight concerns with accountability More: Visitors from Norway, fan pages, gifts: How judges' online fame affects Michigan courts Though Hartig denied the allegations of creating a hostile work environment and said the administrator was doing a poor job, the county settled the lawsuit in 2023 with a $100,000 payout. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald also sparred with the judge in recent years, accusing her in 2022 of dismissing criminal cases because of a grudge with prosecutors regarding scheduling. In a court filing, the prosecutor's office said Hartig was frequently reversed on appeal and 'has a long-standing practice of seeking to impose her own personal view of what the law should be via the criminal cases before her.' Hartig, at the time, said prosecutors knew she wanted them to appear in person, and they did not heed the law. "They didn't do their job and now they'd like to blame the judge for enforcing the law,' she said. Hartig was first elected to the bench in 2010 and was elected to her third six-year term in November 2022. Reporter Dave Boucher contributed to this story. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Complaint: Oakland County Judge Hartig created 'climate of fear'
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Cubs-Diamondbacks instant classic cracks top 5 of craziest games at Wrigley Field
So maybe you've heard of this ballpark named Wrigley Field. It's been around a while … by which we mean since the Woodrow Wilson administration. If you count the postseason, those Chicago Cubs have played more than 8,500 baseball games at Wrigley. Which feels like a lot. So when we tell you that a game there from the past week ranks with the all-time Wrigley classics, you should drop what you're doing (unless what you're doing is reading this column) and jolt to attention. Advertisement That game was last Friday, when the Cubs gave up 10 runs to Arizona in one inning … and then won anyway (13-11). But that doesn't even begin to capture this nutty game. (Here's the box score.) 'Your brain gets a little mushy when you're doing games like that,' said Jim Deshaies, the Cubs' awesome color analyst for Marquee Sports Network. 'When it's finally done, you're like: 'What the hell happened?'' Oh, we'll get to what the hell happened in a moment. But first … Here at Weird and Wild World HQ, we had a question: Is it possible this game deserves a place on the official list of the all-time wildest games ever played at Wrigley? Ready for the answer — from the man most capable of answering it, Ed Hartig, the Cubs' team historian? That would be … yes! Because Ed Hartig is a legend, he agreed to furnish us with his rankings of … 1. The 23-22 game — What a game. Phillies 23, Cubs 22 in 10 innings, on May 17, 1979. And what's so crazy about that game? Haha. Oh, just this stuff, Hartig said: Only those 45 runs … 50 hits … 15 walks … somebody scoring in eight of the 10 innings … 13 combined runs in the first inning … three half-innings with at least six runs scored … 11 home runs … six players with at least four RBIs … and the winning run scoring on a 10th-inning homer involving two Hall of Famers, Mike Schmidt off Bruce Sutter. Whew! 2. The 26-23 game — This was regarded as the Wrigley all-timer until that 23-22 game came along. It was Cubs 26, Phillies 23 on Aug. 25, 1922. And what was so crazy about that other Cubs-Phillies classic? That, Hartig said, would be this: Did you notice that adds up to 49 runs — making it merely the highest-scoring game in MLB history … and 51 hits … nine errors … 21 walks … the Cubs putting up innings of 10 and 14 runs to take a 25-6 lead … and then the Phillies scoring 14 runs over the last two innings and loading the bases before making the final out. Oh, and also … the same two teams played the next day and were 0-0 after 10 innings, because … baseball! Advertisement 3. Last Friday's Cubs-Diamondbacks game! Yes! More on this all-timer coming right up. 4. The 16-15 game — It's been almost half a century since this one: Cubs 16, Reds 15, in 13 innings, on July 28, 1977. So what was so crazy about that? Oh, man. How 'bout all this, Hartig said: Ten runs combined in the first inning … 18 runs in the first three innings … bonus craziness points when the Cubs pinch hit for their shortstop (Iván DeJesús) with an outfielder (José Cardenal) in the ninth, meaning Cardenal had to keep switching between second and short depending on who was batting … after which another outfielder, Bobby Murcer, replaced Cardenal and did the same thing for four more innings … and then the infielder they were switching with, Dave Rosello, made an error in the 12th inning that gave the Reds the lead … only to have (yep) Rosello win it with a 13th-inning single that drove in (why not) a pitcher (Rick Reuschel) for the wild finale. 5. The 12-11 game — This was the previous most recent classic: Cubs 12, Astros 11, in 11 innings, on Sept. 28, 1995. And how'd it make this list? Here's how, Hartig said: Possibly because the Cubs became the first team in history to trail in a game six times and still win. … Seriously. … They trailed by scores of 1-0 (in the first inning), 6-5 (in the sixth), 7-6 (in the seventh), 9-7 (in the eighth), 10-9 (in the 10th) and 11-10 (in the 11th) … and they won. Oh, and also … the two teams combined to use 45 players – 18 of them pitchers. Hartig also furnished us with an Honorable Mention list. Here come the four he left off the top-five list: Sept. 28, 1930 (Cubs trail Reds, 9-0, and win, 13-11) … April 30, 1949 (the legendary 'inside-the-glove' home run in which the tying and winning runs score while Andy Pafko argues with the ump that he just made a game-ending catch) … April 17, 1986 (Cubs blow a 12-1 lead to the Phillies and Mike Schmidt hits four homers) … Aug. 29, 1989 (Cubs trail, 9-0, again and win). So that's a lot of epic Wrigley nuttiness. But that's just the pregame show. Now it's time for … 1. The 10-run inning! Here we go. … No team had scored 10 runs in an inning all season. … The Cubs hadn't allowed 10-plus in an inning since Aug. 13, 2021. That was 552 games ago. … The Diamondbacks had scored 10-plus in an inning once in the 1,053 games they'd played since the start of the 2018 season. … And then they erupted for 10 in the eighth, to take the lead, at the national historical baseball monument known as Wrigley Field … and they lost. Which seems kinda rare. So … 2. Who the heck scores 10 in an inning and doesn't even win? Two dozen franchises in the modern era have never known what that feels like — to spin off a 10-run inning and lose. Oh, wait. Make that 23 franchises … thanks to the Diamondbacks. Advertisement Before last Friday, only two teams had done that in the past 92 seasons — the Royals (10 in the first against Cleveland on Aug. 23, 2006) and the Pirates (10 in the first in Philadelphia on June 8, 1989, aka the Jim Rooker 'If We Don't Win I'll Walk Back to Pittsburgh' Game). Thanks to the great Sarah Langs of for reminding us that three of the other four teams to do this did it in 1912 — the Yankees (on May 3 against the A's), the Braves (June 20, against the Giants) and Reds (Sept. 26, 1912, against the Cubs). And yes, that means the Cubs are the only team in the modern era to give up 10 in an inning twice and still win! But there's more because … 3. The D-Backs scored 10 in an inning and didn't even make it through that inning with the lead! This inning had been over for about 14 seconds when I heard from loyal reader Brian Coulter. He said he was 'looking forward' to me blowing up my life to look up the last time a team did this seemingly impossible thing. So yeah, I did that. Turns out only one other team in the modern era has ever scored 10-plus runs in an inning to take the lead — and then gave back that lead in the bottom of that inning. The other: Dick Hoblitzell's 1912 Reds. They were down, 9-0, against (yep, the Cubs) entering the ninth … then scored 10 to take the lead, 10-9 … then coughed up two runs in the bottom of the ninth … on four walks and a hit batter! But meanwhile, back here in 2025, the Cubs fired off seven hits in the bottom of the eighth, scored six times and miraculously turned this into the highest-scoring inning (by two teams) in the history of Wrigley Field … which as we've mentioned, has been around a while. Except that's still not all, because … 4. These teams scored 21 runs in an inning and a half! Twelve teams haven't played a whole game all season in which the two teams playing put up 21 runs (or more) … and the Cubs and D-Backs scored 21 just in an inning and a half. As in: five for the Cubs in the bottom of the seventh, 10 for Arizona in the top of the eighth and six more for the Cubs in the bottom of the eighth. So how'd that happen? Would you believe that over those three half-innings, the two teams combined to go 20-for-29 (.690) with five homers … because as Deshaies would put it, 'It's really tough to hit in the major leagues … until it's not.' According to loyal reader/friend of the column Eric Orns, there had been only three other games on record in which 21 runs were scored in an inning and a half — but one of them doesn't fit, because the 2023 Angels scored 21 by themselves. The other two were the Phillies and Pirates (7-9-6) on April 16, 1953, and the Indians and Red Sox (13-6-3) on April 10, 1977. But was any of that even the Weird and Wild part? As our friends from STATS Perform reported, in just those three half-innings, the two teams combined for … ready for all this? … a cycle, a home run cycle (slam, three-run, two-run, solo), six total homers, two slams and at least five runs in three half-innings. So what's so Weird and Wild about that? Just that … There had never been a game in history where all of those things happened in the whole game … and then the Cubs and Diamondbacks did all that in an inning and a half! Advertisement Un-be-freaking-lievable. But it was even more unbelievable because … 5. Before all that, this was just a 'normal' 2-1 game in the seventh! And you just don't see a 2-1 contest transform itself into a game this wacky after the seventh inning, friends. According to Orns, this was only the second time in the past century that a game was that low-scoring that late … and wound up with both teams scoring at least 10 runs. And the only other time happened as recently as 65 years ago! In that one, Reno Bertoia's Washington Senators took a 1-0 lead into the eighth against Minnie Miñoso's White Sox on Aug. 30, 1960 … and then it turned into an 11-10 game. But it took seven runs in the 10th to make that happen. So we're ruling: That wasn't this! Wow. Deep breath. What. A. Game. Digested it all yet? Cool. Now here's the question I asked Jim Deshaies: Could you please explain baseball? DESHAIES: 'Can anyone? You know better than anyone that you cannot. There's no explaining this.' WEIRD AND WILD: 'So all those words I write every week about this stuff are just a waste of time?' DESHAIES: 'No, I think it just continues to make the point — that you can't explain baseball.' W&W: 'So at what point during that game did you realize I was going to call you? DESHAIES: 'I would say, somewhere in the midst of that. After they got the 10 runs and then the Cubs started coming back, I said: This is a Jayson Stark moment. It's absolutely a Jayson moment.' W&W: 'OK then. Here I am. You're welcome!' And also … how amazing a sport is … Baseball! (Top photo of Seiya Suzuki celebrating an eighth-inning home run against the Diamondbacks on April 18: Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)
