Sports | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

For Sports Illustrated Emma Baccellieri portraits Jim Bintliff, the sole mud supplier for major league baseball. When someone asks him what he does on the banks of a Delaware River he tells a lie:

I’ve been sent by the Environmental Protection Agency, and I’m surveying the soil. Or: I’m helping the Port Authority, looking into pollution. Or, if it’s a group of young folks who look like they’ve only come out on the water for a good time: I take this mud, and I put it on my pot plants. They grow like trees.

It prevents anyone from exploring what he’s actually doing, which is what he’s done for decades, what his father did before him, and his grandfather before him: Bintliff is collecting the mud that is used to treat every single regulation major league baseball, roughly 240,000 per season.

The former German star hopes to keep expectations low for the coming World Cup. For now, Klinsmann will take the long view when it comes to soccer success for the United States.

One year since The New York Times Magazine wrote about Klinsmann. I’m not a soccer person but it seems to be going well.

When I saw the final of the Euro 2004 in the Bierzelt of a small town in Bavaria, I would have never thought where I’d end up four years later…

Notice the old man at the beginning. He’s pushing his wheelchair. Seems to be some kind of hobby amongst older people. I see one or two of them per week.

First snow here. Winter’s coming… Hopefully a not too cold one with a white christmas and enough snow (and time) for skiing.

Deutschland. Ein Sommermärchen (Germany. A summer’s tale) was on TV today. I hadn’t seen it before and it strongly reminded me of the great ambience in summer 2006.

End of the Bladenight season for this year. Doesn’t seem like there’s anything similar in Shanghai.