Brendan Latimer

Late at night, headphones on, covers drawn to my chin, I’d thrill to the voice as if it were my own. I was 10 years old. The opera was the1978 RCA recording of Verdi’s Otello, and the baritone – roaring over James Levine’s fortissimo conducting – transformed into a larger-than-life character, sweetly goading here, bluff and muscular there, obliterating and dominant still elsewhere.
Then my dad showed me a production. This same baritone – with close-set eyes, long nose, mane of brown hair, and a...

On pages 8 and 10 of this newsletter from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), I discuss baseball's fall from grace in Black communities.

Mark Fine, the new marketing guru for the O’s, cited “fan surveys” that suggest patrons of Camden Yards yearn to be bludgeoned with more sound than they already are (The Orioles can feel like the away team at Camden Yards. A new team exec is trying to change that, June 23, 2025). But, if the O’s seek to boost attendance, polluting the park with more noise will only push people away.The Orioles throttle back the din for Autism Awareness Night — which is great. But it also reveals the exclusionary...