Welcome to “I’m Curious!”

Hello! I’m Roey, and this is “I’m Curious,” a newsletter with takes, thoughts and observations about sports and more.

This newsletter exists because I want to learn about, talk about and work with sports. I don’t work full-time in sports right now. Even if I did, I probably would still want to talk about it. Thus, this newsletter. Expect sports to be the focus but I might cover other topics when I would like.

It’s called “I’m Curious” for two big reasons. One, I love chasing topics I’m curious about, learning as much about them as possible and then explaining them to somebody. And two, I’ve noticed that when I interview people, I say that phrase A LOT. It’s literally a verbal crutch for me.

If you are signing up for this newsletter early on, you may know me. If you don’t, I am a full-time TV news producer from New Jersey but living just outside Washington, D.C. I have a ton of random knowledge and my brain often works by drawing weird parallels. I love making complicated things make sense. My sports interests vary but baseball has always been a favorite, and women’s soccer and basketball have become recent hyperfixations. I’ll still try to cover a lot of things.

And right now, this is an entirely free newsletter that is purely a passion project. Everybody and their mother has a newsletter. Why not me?

Sometimes I will pull things from my work, reporting and research, but a lot of this is just taking advantage of the internet letting people use it as a journal for their thoughts. I hope you read mine sometimes.

(And as another note, I am a journalist working with a national news organization. My opinions are not reflective of theirs. This newsletter is its own thing, and although I’ll highlight some of my reporting work, they have the opportunity to get it first.)

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s the U.S. men’s national team getting bounced out of Copa America!

The other day I was talking to a friend who wasn’t a sports fan about sports. He said something like, “soccer probably doesn’t get that weird, right? It’s pretty straightforward.”

I didn’t even know where to begin with the world’s weirdest game.

Today, I think we can begin with the U.S. men’s national team. For a team that’s been “up and coming” for years now, getting bounced in the group stage of Copa America is a pretty disappointing result.

But the weirdness and ugliness of the games they played know no bounds.

Looking at Monday night’s score: Uruguay 1, U.S. 0 – it’s clear that the referees blowing an offside call, taking several minutes to look at a play where not one but two Uruguay players were offside and saying it wasn’t offside and Uruguay’s goal counted cost the U.S. the game.

Could the U.S. have advanced with a draw? Sure, maybe. Would it have been any less ugly? Probably not.

As the U.S. goes back into its hidey hole until they trot Gregg Berhalter out yet again to coach the team to another underwhelming result, we might as well marvel at the game against Panama.

In terms of weirdness, we had, in order:

• A U.S. goal called back for offsides

• A Tim Weah yellow card canceled and turned into a red, making the U.S. have to play most of the match with 10 men

• The U.S. taking the lead anyway

• Panama scoring right back less than 5 minutes later

• It’s not even halftime yet

• Then after the half, a penalty shot for Panama gets reversed

• Panama scores in the 85^th minute to take the lead

• Panama gets a red card of their own, meaning the last 5 or so minutes get played with both teams having 10 men

Soccer doesn’t get that weird, right?

My Reporting

This past weekend I got to do some reporting! I covered not one but two sporting events – the WNBA matchup between the Washington Mystics and Las Vegas Aces, followed by the NWSL matchup between the Washington Spirit and North Carolina Courage.

Let’s break it down by league:

WNBA

Don’t let the early struggles fool you, the Las Vegas Aces are still really good. The two-time defending champs have so many options. Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young combined for 48 points for the Aces. Combined they took 21 shots and only missed four of them. So if A’ja Wilson’s streak of scoring 20 or more points every game ends (it did), or if Kelsey Plum scores only 2 points (she did), they’re not done for.

Speaking of which, I did get to interview Kelsey Plum. She helped me understand just how important someone like A’ja Wilson is, even if she’s not having a good game. Plum explained how Wilson “commands respect” from defenses. In the process, defenders are drawn to Wilson. Meanwhile Plum and other Aces can get slightly better angles on every shot, even layups down low.

Also side note, Plum’s eyes are just wide open all the time and she was staring dead into my soul explaining all of this. It would have been intimidating but she’s just so vibrant and seems so excited about everything that it offsets what would otherwise be terrifying energy.

It pains me to say it as someone raised a fan of the Tennessee Lady Vols and Pat Summitt, but everybody in women’s basketball loves UConn. Mystics rookie Aaliyah Edwards had two big-name fans in the crowd, her former teammates and current UConn Huskies Azzi Fudd and Paige Bueckers. Yes, I got to chat with them too. They’re excited for next season and Paige could not stop showing off how much she loved Aaliyah.

Postgame, even Aces coach Becky Hammon got in on the UConn love fest, telling me right off the bat when I asked about Edwards, “I love UConn kids.” When she found out Bueckers was in the crowd, Hammon dubbed her “my favorite” and said “that kid knows how to freakin’ play.”

NWSL

Apparently because my employer Scripps has broadcasting rights to the NWSL, I too get to benefit. One big orange vest later and to my surprise, I can literally sit on the field to cover games.

On the other end of the field from me, the Ashley Sanchez Revenge Tour™ unfolded. Less than a year ago, she was here in DC, locked in to play for the Spirit thanks to a brand new 3-year extension. A few months later, the team kicked her to the curb, trading her away for a draft pick. (I’d be remiss not to say it worked out for Washington, who picked star rookie and newly-minted Olympic team alternate Hal Hershfelt.

Speaking of which, before I get back to the main story… want to see and hear Hershfelt smash a ball at a keeper from on the field? Of course you do.)

But by her own account, Sanchez was gutted by both the trade and by being split up from her close friend and teammate Trinity Rodman. 

I was able to snap a pic of the two of them meeting up before the game.

But less than 20 minutes in, Sanchez skipped what might’ve been a chance to get the ball to a shooter and snapped a shot of her own. It took a poetic bounce off the hands of the normally unflappable Spirit keeper Aubrey Kingsbury and right into the back of the net.

Try as they might, the Spirit could not find an equalizer. Sanchez’s goal stood as the only one of the night.

“Honestly, it felt great,” Sanchez told me postgame. “It was kind of a shock.”

Some other things that happened off-pitch:

• The Spirit did host a Pride Parade around the field at halftime. The grand marshal of it, Ms. Shi-Queeta Lee, spoke with me afterward. As it turns out, she got her start in drag while playing on a gay softball team and being asked to dress in drag for their end-of-season.

• I also got to chat with injured Spirit player Anna Heilferty. A silver lining to her suffering season-ending knee injuries two years in a row is that, in both years, she has been able to promote pride night by dressing up in drag and doing a photo shoot. Yes, she is also Shi-Queeta’s drag daughter. This year, the theme was public transit, leading to a striking photoshoot on the DC Metro. Take a look, but I get the sense that if she wanted to, Ms. Addie Diva Lee could follow the path of her drag mom from the sports world to the drag world.

I really wish my iPhone hadn’t decided recording those videos was the moment it would forget how to record audio but alas, all I have are videos with garbled noise, otherwise I’d share them with you.

As a consolation prize, one last cool game thing. In case you wondered what it’s like to be in a pregame huddle, wonder no more.

Final Scores

Aces 88, Mystics 77

Courage 1, Spirit 0

Other Sports Takes and Things of Note

Free Agent Frenzy: Both the NBA and NHL started their free agencies in the last couple days. Paul George going to the 76ers a) makes Philly a hyped-up contender bound to disappoint you again and b) confirms that the trade the Clippers made for him with the Thunder might actually be the worst deal in NBA history. It’s been five years and OKC has two more years of being able to fleece the Clippers for picks. And I was today years old when I learned that SGA was also a part of that deal. God, that’s an awful trade.

Chris Paul going to the Spurs on a one-year deal is fun but kinda makes no sense. Yes, I am drooling at the prospect of him and Victor Wembanyama playing together. But the Spurs aren’t going to give Paul the title he likely wants this season and he takes playing time away from younger players on a rebuilding team. Makes no sense for either side, but hey, we get the benefits so I’m not complaining.

Over to the NHL now where the Nashville Predators are reminding us all what free agency should be. Too many teams these days pinch pennies trying to make a little bit more profit in what’s already a massively profitable business. When you’re gonna make money no matter what, you should at least try to win (Hal Steinbrenner, please read this again. Keep reading it until it makes sense.)

The Predators nabbed seven-time all-star Steven Stamkos, former Conn Smythe Trophy winner Jonathan Marchessault, the consistently solid defenseman Brady Skjei, and Dallas’s super-backup goaltender Scott Wedgewood, all within minutes of the start of free agency Monday. Two forty-goal scorers and two key role players, all before anybody so much as blinked? The Perds want to win, and I’m happy to see it.

MLB Offenses are Offensive: It’s halfway through the MLB season and the ~vibes~ are ~weird.~ The game seems to kinda be coming apart at the seams. A weird number of journeyman pitchers have put it all together to have career years at the same time. Look at the top 10 in pitcher WAR on FanGraphs.

Garrett Crochet pitched mostly in relief in college. He never had a professional start until this year. He might win the Cy Young. Did I mention he’s on the worst team in baseball?

Seriously, did anybody have Tanner Houck, Ranger Suárez, Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo and the ghost of Chris Sale in the top 10 for WAR? If you did, please come collect your prize. If you said it would happen without a single Cole, Scherzer, Verlander, or Kershaw in sight, go buy a Powerball ticket. If you said there would be not one but two Kansas City Royals pitchers on there, you might as well start a religion.

Part of it seems to be the offensive environment. Despite the rule changes last season meant to bolster offense, output this season has been putrid.

With a league-wide .242 batting average, .311 on-base percentage and .393 slugging percentage, this is set to be a pretty bad offensive year. OBP and SLG are better than some of the worst offenders, but the .242 average is currently 4^th-worst in recorded history based on Baseball Reference’s data, and the worst number outside the deadball era besides 1968, the “year of the pitcher.” Runs per game are still above the lows of the early 2010s, though, and the rate of 0.72 stolen bases per game is tied with last season for the highest number in a quarter-century. At least there’s that.

Something Good I Ate

I was trying to figure out a fun ender for each edition of “I’m Curious,” and I think I’ll end each of these by highlighting a cool meal I had one time.

To kick things off, we go to a place that Google Maps knows simply as “Taco Stand.” It’s located at the corner of the Calle Coahuila and the Avenida C Niños Héroes in Tijuana, Mexico, right outside the Hong Kong strip club. You have to walk a solid 15-20 minutes from the actual border crossing but it’s three blocks away from the border wall. Because of the slats in the fence, you can stand at the cart and see America.

Meanwhile you are decidedly not in America. Go for lunch on a weekday and you’re surrounded by construction workers in neon-orange and highlighter-yellow vests. The wall above you shows some scantily-clad girl because they park their cart literally outside and around the corner from the door for a strip club.

I have been twice and had a delicious meal both times. The taqueros are always friendly, more or less bilingual and put on an unintentional show with their sizzling grill, the dicing of veggies, and the thrilling combo of a big ol’ knife and the massive tornado of meat spinning on the trompo and taunting you with each slow, steady spin.

Anyway, you get a bunch of well-seasoned and marinated meat with a good bunch of onions, cilantro, and some already slightly soggy tortillas just barely holding it together. They have a few meats, but the al pastor wins out. Eat it quick before it disintegrates, but you’ll be getting the best taco of your life.