ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Penn State fraternities were running an organized cocaine trafficking operation — and one of the defendants is somebody's dad. A 12-year-old girl from Alabama just tied Mo'ne Davis's all-time Little League World Series strikeout record. The Women's Professional Baseball League played its first games in 70 years and nobody's talking about it enough. Caitlin Clark is still getting hit and the WNBA is still fumbling the officiating response. The Red Sox went from 15 games back to a wild card spot on the back of a franchise-record win streak, the Orioles went on a tear of their own, and then Baltimore turned around and traded their franchise catcher to Boston. The team they were chasing. In the same division.
What We Cover This Episode Penn State Frat Cocaine RingPennsylvania's attorney general charged 14 people connected to a cocaine-trafficking operation running out of two Penn State fraternity houses. This was not a party gone wrong. The AG described it as an upper-level trafficking organization. Two frat members were making regular supply runs to Philadelphia and New York. Pledges were used as labor to cut and package the product. And one of the defendants is a student's father, charged with hiding a safe full of drugs and cash to obstruct the investigation.
Delta Upsilon is on interim suspension. Sigma Chi was already not a recognized organization on campus. Thomas Robinson thought his arrest was a prank. It was not a prank.
The detail that takes this from news story to full segment: the AG said that for some pledges, cutting and packaging cocaine was their indoctrination into the fraternity. That sentence deserves its own moment.
Women's Professional Baseball League — Inaugural Season
The WPBL played its first games on August 1. Four teams. All games at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois. Streaming on ESPN+. This is the first professional women's baseball league since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League folded in 1954.
The No. 1 pick in the inaugural draft was Kelsie Whitmore, a two-way standout who went to the San Francisco Firebells. Mo'ne Davis, 24 years old, was drafted by the Los Angeles Queens. If you watched her pitch at the 2014 Little League World Series, this moment is going to hit you.
The league was co-founded by Justine Siegal, the first woman to ever coach for an MLB organization. The regular season runs through September 6.
Women have been playing baseball since 1875. This is not a novelty. It is a revival.
Little League World Series — Kinley Rasmus
Kinley Rasmus is 12 years old, from Phenix City, Alabama, and she just tied Mo'ne Davis's record for the most strikeouts by a female pitcher in Little League World Series history.
Six innings. One hit. Eight strikeouts. Zero runs. Alabama lost 2-0 because they couldn't score behind her. She pitched a complete game shutout and took the loss. That is the most baseball thing that has ever happened.
She threw 81 pitches, which means she can't pitch again this tournament under LLWS rules. She's still on the field at shortstop and already went viral for a defensive play in the same game. Her dad is former MLB pitcher Cory Rasmus. Her uncle is former outfielder Colby Rasmus. Her other uncle, Case Rasmus, is the team's head coach. This is a baseball family.
The nickname circulating on SportsCenter: "Fear the bow." She pitches with a big white bow in her hair.
WNBA Roundup
The Indiana Fever went 2-1 this week and are pushing for a playoff spot. Caitlin Clark is still in the middle of the biggest officiating controversy the WNBA has had in years. Five technical fouls on the season, including one for clapping. Alyssa Thomas hit her in the throat on a dead ball and nothing was called in real time. The WNBA later reviewed it, upgraded it to a Flagrant 2, and suspended Thomas. The Fever's appeal on the clapping technical is still pending.
Beyond Indiana, the Atlanta Dream are the most fun team in the league right now. They dropped 124 points on the Los Angeles Sparks on Thursday. That is not a misprint. The Las Vegas Aces are dangerous again after hammering Connecticut 101-78. The Minnesota Lynx are 4-1 over their last five and making a quiet playoff push. And the Portland Fire, a first-year expansion team, beat both Seattle and Phoenix this week.
MLB — The Red Sox and Orioles Post-All-Star Tear
The Red Sox entered the All-Star break on a 9-game winning streak. They came out of it and immediately swept the Tampa Bay Rays in four games. The streak hit 13 straight — the longest in franchise history since 1948 and tied for second-longest ever. At the peak, Boston was 50-48 and sitting in the AL's third wild card spot. They were 15 games back in late June.
The Orioles went on a 7-game win streak of their own, sweeping the Houston Astros before rolling into Fenway Park. Two teams combined for 20 consecutive wins walking into the same series. Boston won Game 1 to push to 14 straight.
AL East standings as of August 22:
- Tampa Bay Rays: 76-52 (1st)
- New York Yankees: 73-56 (2nd)
- Boston Red Sox: 69-59 (3rd, Wild Card)
- Toronto Blue Jays: 64-67 (4th)
- Baltimore Orioles: 62-67 (5th)
Boston is scoring 5.76 runs per game since the break. That is the best mark in all of baseball.
MLB Trade — Adley Rutschman from Baltimore to Boston
On August 3, the trade deadline, the Baltimore Orioles traded Adley Rutschman to the Boston Red Sox. Their AL East rival. The team chasing them in the standings.
Rutschman was the No. 1 overall pick in 2019, a three-time All-Star, and the face of the Orioles' rebuild. He had one year left before free agency and had never signed an extension. Baltimore already had Samuel Basallo locked up for eight years at $67 million and posting 16 home runs this season. So they sold Rutschman while they still could.
What Baltimore got back: Boston's No. 2 prospect (MLB Pipeline Top 50), plus three other top-5 org prospects, catcher Carlos Narvaez, and a player to be named later who turned out to be outfielder Harold Rivas.
What Boston got: the best defensive catcher in baseball and an immediate upgrade at a position where they ranked last in MLB in home runs.
The detail that makes this trade genuinely wild: Boston swept Baltimore in the series right before the deadline while Rutschman was out injured. The Red Sox were 23-3 since July 2. They were already the hottest team in baseball. Then they bought the franchise player from the team they just swept. Three days later.
This is our last episode of Season 6, we kick off season 7 in two weeks with an NFL preview and much more....
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