Welcome Back to “I’m Curious!”

Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

I’m back to prove this wasn’t a one-off. So you’ll be getting another newsletter with takes, thoughts and observations about sports and more.

This is still purely a passion project. And as always, things may come from my work and reporting, but a lot of this is just me giving my thoughts. And also as always, my opinions do not represent those of my employer, and they get priority for my reporting.

Still, happy to share that and more with you!

If you missed edition 1, you can read it here. And pass this along! Tell your friends to subscribe, even if they don’t know me!

The Most Curious Thing This Week

It’s been two and a half years, but the greatest driver in Formula One history is back where he belongs: on the top step of the podium.

Sir Lewis Hamilton is the greatest to ever do it. It’s something that pains me to say, as someone lured into F1 fandom by Michael Schumacher and a longtime admirer of the balls-to-the-wall driving style of Ayrton Senna. I also spent most of Hamilton’s glory years rooting for Sebastian Vettel and complaining about how many big rule decisions seemed tailor-made to help Hamilton out. (see: Canada 2019.)

Since his win in Saudi Arabia in 2021 and the immensely controversial finish in the following race at Abu Dhabi cost Hamilton an eighth World Championship, Hamilton has been off the pace. Since then, Red Bull left Mercedes in the dust. The team’s lone win fell not to Hamilton, but his teammate George Russell.

Hamilton’s air of dominance has faded. The last few years, including his impending move to Ferrari, appear to be an increasingly desperate chase of glory years that may never return.

But lately, as Hamilton has had to grasp with life as a mere mortal driver and my other childhood favorites have bowed out, I’ve learned to stop worrying and love Sir Lewis.

And Sunday showed off every reason why.

Racing in Mercedes-Benz’s Silver Arrows for the final time on home soil, the kid from Stevenage hauled a somewhat-underperforming Merc around Silverstone to notch his 104^th career win, the most of any Formula One driver ever.

In a post-race interview, Hamilton acknowledged that he had his doubts about whether it would happen again.

“There's definitely been moments where the thought that this was it, that it was never going to happen again,” Hamilton said. “So to have this feeling coming across the line, I think honestly, I've never cried coming from a win. It just came out of me. It's a really, really great feeling.”

This clearly means so much to him.

There’s such a sharp clash to Hamilton being on top in Formula One. The circuit’s only Black driver in its nearly-75-year history, rocking his hair in braids and clad in an all-black racing suit, holding back tears while wrapped in the red-white-and-blue Union Jack, as “God Save the King” blares out of the speakers. These symbols of imperialism and racism all having to bend to honor a descendant of the colonized, a man who has fought against those things his entire life, even as fame risked isolating him from it.

He was willing to put his reputation on the line by orchestrating anti-racism displays after the murder of George Floyd and the killing of Breonna Taylor.

He was willing to put his reputation on the line by constantly calling out the teams and businesses that paid him for the fact that almost 20 years on no Black driver has been able to join him in the F1 driver ranks.

He was willing to put his reputation on the line by speaking out about the ethical issues with racing in Saudi Arabia and even protesting before the race.

And he was willing to put his reputation (and possibly his own body) on the line by wearing a rainbow helmet as F1 traveled to race in places with anti-LGBTQ+ laws on the books: Qatar, Hungary, Florida.

No matter his politics or yours, Sir Lewis Hamilton has been a barrier breaker and an iconoclast, putting it all on the line throughout his rise to the top of the Formula One.

My Reporting

Nothing in-person this week.

But I did get a bit virtually leading up to the weekend’s WNBA and NWSL games on Scripps’s air.

Let’s break it down by league:

WNBA

On Friday night, I had my eye on the game between the Atlanta Dream and Dallas Wings. The Wings have been among the worst teams in the league (as of Tuesday they are 5-17.) But pregame, I asked coach Latricia Trammell about rookie guard Jacy Sheldon. Trammell looked like she just won the lottery.

“I am SO glad you asked that question,” she said with a spark.

In her answer, she singled out Sheldon’s shooting, which makes sense. Sheldon is shooting over 37% from 3-point range this season, which is 3^rd among qualifying rookies. By the way, Caitlin Clark is shooting 33% from 3 this season.

“She’s an incredible shooter,” Trammell said. “We always want to shoot first and pass second.”

And shoot first she did. Sheldon led the Wings to a win on Friday, with a career-high 17 points, including making 5 of her 8 3-point attempts on the night, including a clutch trey with less than a minute to go.

“[My teammates] made it really easy for me,” Sheldon told me postgame. “And just continued to push through adversity that whole game and stay together.”

 “I love it when you see players succeed, and especially a rookie comes in,” Trammell added, saying she’s usually emotional and let it show after Sheldon’s big basket. “I think I chest-bumped her, teary-eyed? I love you? Something like that.”

And of course, Sheldon got the postgame drip chain.

NWSL

Two matchups on the docket and let’s start with the later one. Angel City FC hosting NY/NJ Gotham FC in Los Angeles.

Angel City sits in 11^th place out of 14 teams but is only one win out of a playoff spot. The problem is they don’t score. With 16 goals, only three teams have scored fewer goals than ACFC.

They play a style where everything, even offense, starts from having everybody stay pretty far back. They invite teams to play in a high press, that is, they let offenses move up close to the goal. It’s risky, but values strong defense and waiting for a hole to open up before pushing forward.

“It’s truly an honor that teams want to press us. We thrive in those situations,” goalkeeper Didi Haračić told me. “We aren’t afraid to play out of the back or play through teams. That’s who we are as a club.”

“I don’t see pressure from teams a challenge,” Haračić said. “I see it more as an opportunity.”

And then there’s Gotham. The team whose players will make up 5 of the 18 main roster players on the U.S. Women’s National Team at the Paris Olympics. After some early sputtering, they’re up to 4^th in the standings.

But this year it’s a non-Olympian, Ella Stevens, who shares the team lead in both goals and assists in her first year playing for the club.

“We signed her because her attributes really fit into our style,” Gotham FC Coach Juan Carlos Amorós told me. “That’s the perfect scenario of a player, someone who can shoot and score a lot of goals and someone who can score more than the goals she should.”

What struck me, though, is that she can set them up. I saw a highlight of her dashing down the left side of the field, coming at the keeper from the left side. Then her teammate Rose Lavelle comes running down the middle of the field, nobody on her, and scores on a wide-open net.

Anyway, it happened similarly on Saturday night, except with Delanie Sheehan on the receiving end, and with about a million times more swagger.

Final Scores

Wings 85, Dream 82

Gotham 2, Angel City 1

Other Sports Takes and Things of Note

Bev’s Bravery: I want to take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate Bev Yanez, coach of the NWSL’s Racing Louisville FC, for publicly sharing that she’d be missing the club’s match on Saturday against North Carolina Courage after having a miscarriage.

For a tragedy as misunderstood, downplayed and stigmatized as a miscarriage, it means a ton, especially if it makes even one person just a little bit more comfortable to share their grief with somebody else.

Her team made it clear: they’re with her every step of the way.

NASCAR Caught in Chicago Traffic: Man, NASCAR could not catch a break with its second-annual July 4^th weekend Chicago road closure, I mean, street race. The headline act, the Cup Series Grant Park 165, only made it through 58 of 75 scheduled laps because it got dark. Rain caused the race to be delayed and later temporarily stopped. 

I caught a bit of the second-tier Xfinity Series race on Saturday. It was a 50-lap race and a full 16 of them were run under caution. Nearly a third of the race was a loud, slow parade around some closed Chicago streets rather than actual racing. I caught a part of the back half of the race.

Lap 30 had a caution.

Back racing on lap 33.

Lap 35 had another caution.

Back racing on lap 38.

Lap 39 has a third caution.

Back racing on lap 41.

Lap 44 has a fourth caution.

I changed the channel.

“Glizzy Lizzy” Meets Her Match: The Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest proceeded as usual this Fourth of July, but with another hero banished into exile for running afoul of America’s Most Poetic Carnie, Major League Eating head honcho George Shea. Joey Chestnut was left to wallow on the Island of Irrelevancy alongside the already-excommunicated Takeru Kobayashi. In this case, for the mortal sin of signing a sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods.

Nevertheless, the show must go on.

Sure, Patrick “Deep Dish” Bertoletti blew through 58 sausage tubes to earn Coney Island’s much-vaunted Mustard Belt to win the men’s title.

And sure, America’s Next Competitive Eating Superstar Miki Sudo put back 51 franks to put her stamp on the women’s contest.

Even Eric “Badlands” Booker did his damndest to save the affair by chugging a gallon of Nathan’s mystery lemonade in a world-record 21.8 seconds.

All a snooze compared to the wiener-take-all Kobayashi vs. Chestnut showdown to resolve their beef once and for all on Netflix in September.

For me, the real drama this year occurred a little lower down the card.

There are many forms of pride. But no type of pride is as weirdly emphatic as the pride that emerges for your fiancée’s friend who you haven’t even met, after you learn she’s participating in the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. Apparently she won a qualifier by beating one other contestant and eating seven hot dogs in ten minutes.

On the big day, George Shea rocks the usual straw hat while giving her one of his signature flowery descriptions. “Her body is a temple, filled not with the faithful, but with macaroni n’ cheese,” Shea boasts. This is the unlikely hero into whom we pour all of our bizarre hot dog pride: Ellen “No Nickname” Straub.

And then there is her dreaded rival (I’m completely making this up but this is the only other lower-card contender whose name caught my eye), Elizabeth “Glizzy Lizzy” Salgado. The fact on her ESPN banner? That she once ate a whole Costco cake by herself.

“Glizzy Lizzy” has become a bit of a niche favorite in the contest. The likes of ESPN and Yahoo Sports have showcased her to nab clicks. In 2023, she wrapped up with a grand total of 4.25, finishing second-from-last.

While Miki Sudo got her TV time and ESPN showed the results of the top-5, the rest of us sickos had to wait for the tweet from Major League Eating to see how this rivalry unfolded. There was no fancy graphic. Half the names weren’t capitalized. But the results could not be denied.

“Glizzy Lizzy” was able to rizz 5.5 glizzies to her cause. She finished second from the bottom again.

But in the bottom was a name we did not know. And sitting right above Ms. Salgado and her memeworthy nickname, in a miraculous upset… was Ellen.

God Bless America.

Something Good I Ate

To wrap this up, I need a hot dog, right? How about the joy of confirming your nostalgia? In 2010, we were short on money but my mom wanted to indulge my love of travel. To keep costs low, I would go stay with family friends.

That year, the trip was to Iceland, to stay with a high school classmate of my mom’s. Teenage me roamed the streets of Reykjavík and heard there was a hot dog stand known for being good and getting the likes of Bill Clinton and Kim Kardashian to stop by.

I walk up, get in line and approach a metal box about 8 feet by 8 feet in size with a counter, grill, shelves and drink fountain. It fits one employee comfortably. Two would get a little tight.

I order it as suggested, með öllu, with everything. What I apparently get is a hot dog, pretty normal looking, not too crispy or chewy. It has a bit of ketchup on it, raw onions, fried onions, a thick layer of remoulade and a ton of sweet brown mustard.

It was fantastic. I keep going back. For years, I told everybody: sure I’m a New York/New Jersey guy, but the best hot dogs are in Iceland.

A 2018 layover in Reykjavík put it to the test. I queue up in a significantly longer line. I start to get a bit emotional, both excited about the hot dog and worried it’ll disappoint.

Think about it, how many times have you enjoyed a childhood favorite—a food, a TV show, anything—that’s nowhere as good when you revisit it? Yes, the glizzy is giving me feels.

I know they’re small and the line will only get longer. I order three. I snap a picture.

Each bite becomes a trip down memory lane. A wave of validation. A joy that the pleasure you once drew is still accessible despite the years going by.

The mustard is sweet. But the nostalgia is sweeter.