Welcome to “I’m Curious!”

Hello and welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

If you can’t keep up with the Olympics… well, neither can I. But we’ll do our best to pull some fun things out of it.

As always, please spread the word if you like what you’re reading. Tell a friend and get them to subscribe!

And do you have thoughts or your own take on what I’m writing about? Let me know. You might even be published in an upcoming newsletter.

So let’s jump in!

The Most Curious Thing This Week

Some of America’s finest Olympic heroes are off to strong starts. Simone Biles has a chance to snag up to five medals after advancing to pretty much every final. U.S. women’s soccer already earned a spot in the quarterfinals. Both USA basketball teams have been mopping the floor with everybody they’ve faced.

Speaking of Simone Biles, look at this composite image of her floor routine. Just amazing.

So let’s jump to some underdog stories, shall we?

First, there’s swimmer and pride of Arlington, Virginia, Torri Huske. She missed out on a medal at the last games by one one-hundredth of a second.

This year, the margin was 0.04 seconds, but she was on the right side of it.

Huske won the gold in the 100 meter butterfly event, barely sneaking in ahead of her teammate Gretchen Walsh, who happens to hold the world record in that event.

Arlington is very proud!

Next up, New Jersey’s own Nic Fink. The Morristown native won a silver medal in the men’s 100 meter breaststroke in a photo finish, actually tying two-time defending gold medalist Adam Peaty of the UK. Both lost by just two hundredths of a second to Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi, who won gold.

Fink already has prepared for life after swimming, working a full-time 9-to-5 job as an engineer after getting a master’s degree from Georgia Tech.

But Fink’s biggest prize may come after he gets back from Paris, as ESPN reports he and his wife are expecting their first child in September.

My Reporting

Not a ton to write home about this week, but I did set up a nice Olympic preview segment on Friday’s edition of America Tonight.

We brought on Maxwell Millington of Axios, who has done some nice Olympic stories, including one he co-wrote that featured an interview with Team USA track & field star Gabby Thomas.

Here’s that conversation in full:

Other Sports Takes and Things of Note

Non-Medal Olympic Action: Two other underdog stories haven’t resulted in a medal just yet but deserve a shoutout.

Loren Alfonso, a Cuban defector competing for Azerbaijan, pulled off an extraordinary upset in Olympic boxing.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist Julio Cesar La Cruz saw his bid for a third gold end at the hands of Alfonso, who shocked La Cruz by winning a split decision in the men’s heavyweight quarterfinals.

Alfonso also has bounced around three different weight classes in the last four years, including a bronze medal at the Tokyo games as a light heavyweight.

And in a follow-up to last week, there is more basketball success for South Sudan!

The South Sudanese team stunned Puerto Rico, winning their first game in group play 90-79. A run of 11 unanswered points in the 4^th quarter helped them by a Puerto Rico squad that includes NBA player Jose Alvarado.

South Sudan gets another go at the U.S., this time in a group play match, as they’ll be matching up again on Wednesday.

MLB Trade Deadline: Teams are allowed until Tuesday at 6pm to trade players with each other. Personally, I believe this is a sin because the trade deadline used to consistently be July 31^st at 4pm and in recent years it’s been moved around a couple different days and it’s hard to follow.

Regardless, as stressful as trades are for players involved, they are fun to see unfold from a fan’s perspective. There’s an exciting glimmer of hope for every team that they may magically be able to turn water into wine and find the star that will put them over the top or the prospect who will deliver an exciting future.

I may live to eat these words but so far there have been no true stunners.

Charismatic Bahamian and 2022 All-Star Jazz Chisholm Jr. is now in Yankee pinstripes, coming over in a deal with Miami. He can hit for power and steal bases but isn’t exactly the best when it comes to the advanced metrics (career .310 on-base percentage and 104 wRC+ translate to him basically being around league average when it comes to getting on-base and producing runs.)

Gotta give the man some love, though, he hit two home runs on Monday night!

He is cool, though, and rocks a chain, which has already annoyed the worst Yankee fans. Despite being one myself, I also really don’t like those types of fans of the Yankees. It’s 2024 and it’s ok if a player shows some personality.

Cuban masher Jorge Soler is back with the Braves, in a deal sure to spark some nostalgia for Atlanta fans. The Braves also made a move near the Trade Deadline in 2021 to acquire Soler, who hit 14 home runs in a two-month span and then went on to be World Series MVP that year. 

We should note that he continued the tradition of NL East teams avenging the Yankees by beating the Astros in the World Series. (Warning: the aura on this next clip is off-the-charts.)

The Rays are having a bit of a “fire sale,” their first in a while considering usually they’ve been contenders usually trading for the big names the last few years.

They moved All-Star infielder Isaac Paredes to the Cubs, an interesting move for them considering they are further out of contention than the Rays are.

The Rays do tend to nail their trades, though, and I’m excited about Christopher Morel coming back their way. He’s 25 years old, hit 26 home runs last year, and despite struggling this season, all of his key “expected” metrics suggest he is on track to improve on where he is right now.

The Seattle Mariners have the third-worst runs per game rate in the majors, and getting outfielder Randy Arozarena from the Rays may help. The outfielder who hit a record-setting 10 homers in the 2020 postseason is on pace for his fourth season with at least 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases.

And in a move that should make their rivals in the American League East shudder, the Orioles added pitcher Zach Eflin in the Rays’ sell-off. Eflin finally put it all together in his eighth major league season at age 29, finishing 6^th in American League Cy Young Award voting. He has a 4.11 ERA this season, but his advanced pitching metrics suggest he may be able to match his 3.50 ERA from last season going forward.

Pitching had long been a weak spot for the Orioles, but now that they have Eflin along with former Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes and emerging homegrown star Grayson Rodriguez, Baltimore has a front three to their rotation that can go toe-to-toe with anybody else’s.

Nevertheless, these are the Rays we’re talking about. So we can automatically apply the decade-old tweet from the great baseball writer Sam Miller: “LOVE this trade for the Rays. Who'd they give up? And who'd they get?”

Spa Day: The Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps may be my favorite stop on the Formula One calendar. Spa is a shortened version of an almost 9-mile long track of roads, and at over 4 miles long in its current form, is the longest lap of any in F1.

The track has held racing since 1925 and was featured in Formula One’s first-ever season in 1950. It drives through an area that had a prominent role in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. And as the name implies, it’s located just outside the town of Spa. The town’s mineral water springs led to it being the place where the word “spa” comes from.

It also has probably the craziest turn in Formula One, Eau Rouge, a quick slight-left into a sweeping uphill right-hand curve that finishes off with a blind slight-left over a crest. There’s nothing quite like it. Oh, and in an F1 car these days, you’re supposed to take it full-throttle at about 200 miles per hour.

Of course, if you don’t do it perfectly, it can get really bad really quickly.

Anyway, this weekend, for at least the second time, a race winner at Spa was disqualified after the race.

It happened in 2008, in one of the greatest race finishes I’ve ever seen, when Lewis Hamilton was given a 25-second time penalty hours after the race for not doing enough to give back a position he gained after missing a corner on a wet track.

And it happened again here in 2024, when race winner George Russell’s car failed a post-race weigh-in. His car was 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) under the minimum required weight.

Strangely enough, it came down to his tires. Russell was able to stretch his tires for 34 of the race’s 44 laps, stopping for a pit stop just once. His tires wore down a lot, and Spa, due to its length, doesn’t have a full post-race cooldown lap.

So how does that factor in?

Drivers normally move around the track, basically sweeping up dirt and debris onto their tires. This adds weight to the car. Potentially more than the 3.3 pounds Russell would have needed to make weight. And considering Russell wore down the tires and likely made them lighter, it may actually have been his ability to keep going fast enough on those worn tires that accidentally did him in.

Nevertheless, Russell was disqualified handing the win to, of all people, Lewis Hamilton. His 2008 robbery has been avenged!

Something Good I Ate

So many of my meals here are old, and come from places far from home. Let’s freshen things up and bring it closer to home, then.

On Sunday, Abby and I went to one of our favorite spots, SoKo Butcher Shop and Market in Takoma Park, MD.

It’s a small, red-brick storefront that feels very vintage. Inside, it looks a bit more modern and hipstery, but with some classic features like a display case filled with meats of all sorts. 

Here, of all places, is the best cheesesteak I have had, definitely outside of Philadelphia and possibly including places in Philadelphia too.

It is a behemoth and a mess, fitting a very large amount of prime rib, some caramelized onions, a bit of mayo, and a ton of their house-made cheese wiz onto a French roll.

As you can see, it gets pretty messy, but between the flood of cheese wiz (which tastes about as natural as cheese wiz can get) and the high-quality, tender meat, the result is a cheesesteak full of flavor that melts in your mouth.

Sure, you might need a napkin or five, but the silky-smooth texture, complemented by some still-crunchy caramelized onions, provides a delicious journey that make both the flavor and texture work just about perfectly.

It’s $16 for a sandwich that will either fill you to the brim or provide you with a second meal at a later point. From Arlington, it’s a roughly 40-minute drive snaking through the streets of DC.

But there’s nothing quite like the final stretch, when you navigate Takoma Park’s side streets full of colorful bungalows only to pop out on Caroll Avenue right by SoKo. 

Trust me when I say it’s worth the journey.