Here within the Frozen North Country we feel more warmth in February from our toaster than from the sun. But that's not the form of warmth that this column is taking.

The form of warmth that is actually necessary today in baseball is the warmth that’s noticeable by the teams, the front offices and managers which are under the best pressure in 2025 – or otherwise.

Who are these teams, front offices and managers? We asked this query of 32 baseball executives, former managers, trainers and scouts who took part in our annual survey for spring training. Let's take a have a look at the teams from which you think you’re feeling the warmth.

Mark Shapiro, Ross Atkins, John Schneider and The Blue Jays (22 votes): From the day you called Vlad Guerrero Jr. in 2019, it seems like the Blue Jays are on the clock. But six years and nil -season later, this appears to be within the yr during which the alarm fails.

How are you able to extend Vlad before breaking off the contract talks on Tuesday and preparing for the free agency? What happens should you can't? What are the ripple effects on Bo Bichette and the still talented line-up around you? The remainder of the baseball world focuses on all of this.

What does it mean for the fate of a front office that feels home by all the celebrities that it has followed but couldn’t sign? Stay tuned. There is one season to play. The fan base observed. And this full voice tells us that your complete sport in each of those motion lines is sporty – and the way they affect the individuals who lead this team and stars whose time has produced more frustration as a thrill.

“I don't see anyone under pressure than the Blue Jays,” said an extended -time manager. “I think you have a lot on the line this year.”

Jed Hoyer, Craig Consell and the Cubs (12 votes): Her cursing World Series was nine years ago (quick fast). Her last post -season was (what?) Eight years ago. And the Cubs have now entered their fifth season since Theo Epstein has been on the strategy to discover the inner secrets of the pitch clock. A voter said this as clearly as it may be said: “The cubs have to win.”

You should know that our voters like this squad. It seems like Hoyer, the President of the Club for Baseball operations, has pressed a lot of the best buttons. And there’s a reason why the very best paid manager is in the sport. But should you are the one team that spends a number of money within the NL Central Thrift Shop, you would like something tangible to point out it. Will this be your time?

“The Cubs,” said a rival Exec, “feel under strong pressure.”

Bryce Harper, Trea Turner and the core of the Phillies (7 votes): We introduced a brand new query in our survey this yr: Which roster – or nuclear groups – are the best pressure? The results were fascinating.

The Blue Jays players (nine voices) also won this. But right behind the Phillies. It isn’t obscure why.

They rock the third highest salary statement in baseball. You have two post -season -wrecks. But within the second winter in a row, her legendary team builder, Dave Dombrowski, doubled a squad that was built for the profit. So if this core group desires to stay together, it has to win together.

“They are getting older,” said a voter. “Your core group of players starts age. (Kyle) Schwarber and (JT) Realo are free agents at the top of the yr. I only have a sense of urgency in a really difficult department. “

Jerry Dipoto and the Mariners (7 votes): Let us repeat the Star Cros story of the Mariners: 48 seasons … Zero appearances in the World Series … only five trips to the post-season … and have not even reached a league championship series since 2001. That doesn't quite make you a Clleveland Browns. From baseball, but that's quite a trace of seasons that didn't end well.

Not all of this is obviously located in her modern trade Maestro and the current president of baseball Ops, Jerry Dipoto, who is now entering his 10th season on this front office. But 130 shops into his term, it feels like a significant year in dipotoos life and times.

He may have built the best rotation in baseball. But ownership did not give him the money to build it. So it feels as if this team is just watering – and the baseball world lets us know that it is noticed.

“The iron is hot,” said an ALEXEC, “they usually should not striking.”

Who else will feel the warmth?

Let us summarize the vote for all districts.

Teams/front offices/managers under pressure

Blue Jays – 22
Cubs – 12
Mariner – 7
Parents – 5
Angel – 2
Phillies – 2
Yankees – 1
Red Sox – 1
Cardinals – 1
Astros – 1
Twins – 1
Pirates – 1
Rockies – 1

Manager who were expressly mentioned

John Schneider (Blue Jays) – 3
Oliver Marmol (Cardinals) – 2
Rob Thomson (Phillies) – 2
Aaron Boone (Yankees) – 1
Rocco Baldelli (twins) – 1

Put plans/nuclear groups under pressure

Blue Jays – 9
Phillies – 7
Parents – 5
Yankees – 4
Orioles – 4
Mariner – 3
Cubs – 2
Mets – 2
Astros – 1
Dodgers – 1
Diamondbacks – 1

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With over There are actually 40 armed conflicts happening all over the worldThe costs of warfare are immense and proceed to rise with each passing day.

It is estimated that Russia's war against Ukraine resulted in greater than the next 600,000 Russian victimswith estimates of the full variety of dead and injured on each side as much as 1 million. The war between Israel and Hamas led to this about 140,000 Palestinian and 10,000 Israeli victimsand there have been at the very least 50,000 casualties in the continuing Sudanese civil war. Closer to home, the newly married son of one in every of my colleagues suffered serious injuries and lost all 4 limbs in an explosion while serving within the Middle East.

The lack of life and limb, human rights violations, destruction of non-public property and damage to infrastructure resembling power plants, hospitals and roads make such costs almost incalculable, at the very least in monetary terms.

But the war also opens up opportunities to look after the injured, displaced and forgotten. As someone who studies and writes in regards to the intersection of drugs and the humanities, I often return to the American poet Walt Whitman.

To honor the act of supporting and consoling war victims, there may be hardly a greater source of inspiration than Whitman. who spent greater than three years He volunteered his time and energy in the course of the US Civil War.

Forced to assist

Walt Whitman is taken into account one in every of the best poets in American history. He was born into difficult circumstances in New York in 1819, the second of nine children. He left school on the age of 11 to support his family and worked in various jobs, including typesetter, teacher and newspaper publisher.

In 1855 he self-published his best work of poetry: “grass leaves“, written in free verse and begins with the poem later known as “Song of mine.” Including the fans of the work Ralph Waldo Emersonwho wrote to Whitman: in a letter by which he praises the poet“I welcome you at the beginning of a great career.”

But fame and fortune got here slowly to Whitman, and he continued to work within the newspaper trade. With the beginning of the Civil War, Whitman's brother enlisted, and when Whitman saw his brother named among the many wounded soldiers, he traveled to Virginia to seek out him.

Eventually he discovered that his brother had only suffered a minor injury. But in the course of the search, Whitman encountered dozens of wounded soldiers and piles of amputated limbs, which motivated him to assist not directly.

He secured a job in Washington, D.C., as an Army paymaster's clerk and commenced volunteering at the town's military hospitals, making, by his estimate, over 600 visits, sometimes overnight, to as many as 400 hospitals 100,000 soldiers.

Treat dispenser, letter author

Why would America's best poet willingly spend the higher a part of over three years of his life visiting places of mutilation, torment and suffering?

Although Whitman had no formal training in medicine or nursing, he still felt he had something vital to supply.

“I have found that the simple personal presence and the radiance of ordinary cheerfulness and attraction have succeeded and helped me more than medical care, delicacies, gifts of money, or anything else,” he wrote in “Memoranda during the war.”

Whitman also managed to bring more tangible gifts: “blackberries, peaches, lemons and sugar, wines, all kinds of preserves, pickles, brandy, milk, shirts and all articles of underwear, tobacco, tea and handkerchiefs.”

He procured this stuff from his own meager resources and thru fundraising to present others the chance to donate.

Consider a particular case, that of a young soldier from Massachusetts affected by respiratory and gastrointestinal complaints.

Whitman wrote of him: “His heart was broken. He felt the struggle to keep up any longer was useless. God, the world, humanity, they had all abandoned him. It would feel so good to forever close your eyes to the cruel things around him and towards him.”

But Whitman stood next to him, gave him some money so he could buy milk, and wrote a letter for him to his sister. “As insignificant as it was, he was overwhelmed and began to cry. He has since told me that that little visit at that hour just saved him – one more day and it might have been too late.”

Along with all the opposite gifts in his backpack, Whitman “always gave paper, envelopes and stamps” in order that soldiers could write to their family members back home. Many times he wrote her letters himself, along with his own hand, often sign under their name“Written by Walt Whitman, a friend.”

From the letters, he remarked:

“Many sick and wounded soldiers have not written to their parents, brothers, sisters and even wives for one reason or another for a long time. Some are bad writers, some don't get paper or envelopes; Many people have an aversion to writing because they are afraid of worrying people at home – it is so sad to tell the facts about them. I always encourage men to write and write for them immediately.”

It is remarkable to assume one in every of the English language's best artists sitting on the bedside of so many sick and wounded soldiers, helping them compose letters to distant family and friends, sometimes simply transcribing what they are saying, and sometimes , what they are saying, what they desired to say or what needed to be said.

He cared not just for the soldiers before him, but additionally for his relatives who were sick with worry and lived a whole lot of miles away.

Becoming channels of compassion

Whitman's dedicated service provides profound and lasting lessons to people all over the world.

For one thing, the toll of war cannot simply be quantified within the variety of lives lost or the billions of dollars in damage caused.

There is a human story behind every number. Every wounded or dead soldier is someone's son or daughter, sister or brother, husband or wife, or mother or father. Every civilian victim is someone's friend, neighbor and fellow citizen.

Whitman used his poetic powers not only to share the stories of wounded soldiers with their family members back home. He also used his experiences at her bedside to compose literary masterpieces resembling “The wound mediator” And “Come up from the fields, father.”

As violence permeates the globe, it is simple to look away or develop into numb to headlines and pictures of death and despair. But facing this suffering head-on—through an easy act like extending a hand, a voice, or an ear—is in itself an act of courage.

True, it cannot end or win a war. But this sort of attention is a type of generosity and a path to healing – a path, as Whitman put it in a book Letter to his brother“that our feelings are so thoroughly and permanently absorbed to the roots by these vast swarms of dear, wounded, sick and dying boys.”

On May 7, 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was premiered in Vienna, Austria. On the occasion of its 2 hundredth anniversary, much has been made from this groundbreaking achievement by a composer frequently heralded as the best master of all time.

In an essay for the New York Times Conductor Daniel Barenboim wrote that Beethoven was “the master of bringing emotion and intellect together.”

In one other evaluation, music historian Ted Olson wrote that the Ninth was “the pinnacle of Western classical music.”

There is no doubt that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is a significant work with “global appeal,” as my colleague Olson put it. I admit that I even have a soft spot for this piece. As a cellistI played it twice, once at Carnegie Hall and once while on tour in Asia.

However, I never liked the glorification of Beethoven.

Beethoven backlash

Four years ago I did published a blog post himself under the heading “Beethoven was an above-average composer: let’s leave it at that.”

I had grown bored with the thought of ​​the composer's “genius” and the way we were all taught to position him on a sacred hill because the “great master of the Western canon.”

To say the least, my blog post caused quite a stir.

In “Classical Music’s Suicide Pact (Part 1)” Heather MacDonalda conservative fellow on the Manhattan Institute, wrote that my blog post was a “Beethoven defeat” and that I had “Whiteness within the brain.”

Professor of linguistics John McWhorter even went thus far as to say that I believe Beethoven was “fetishized by the white establishment.”

Conservative commentators defending certainly one of their heroes is nothing recent, however the backlash to my easy reinterpretation of the composer was distorted beyond recognition.

Redefining “The Master.”

My intention was to redefine Beethoven’s greatness within the context of historical ideals white And Patriarchy. I believed then – as I do now – that if Americans could recognize that our music and our music education are deeply rooted in these two ideologies, then we could recognize that Beethoven, actually a very good composer, was simply certainly one of many.

When Beethoven is known as “one of the greatest” composers or “the greatest” composer, those that make this claim achieve this without knowing nearly all of the music that has been created over the centuries.

As I wrote on the time, Beethoven was definitely above average, but “to say he was more is to dismiss 99.9% of the world music written 200 years ago, which would be unscientific and academically irresponsible.”

To understand his reverence, one must imagine in narratives of Western greatness and exceptionalism: that one of the best musical works on our planet were produced by a number of people from a number of countries, and people people were, after all, each white and white male.

To further confuse matters, conservative musicologists normally ask the identical query: “Well, Phil, if not Beethoven, then who?”

However, this query is most frequently asked in bad faith, as there isn’t a acceptable answer for many who defend the established norms of the musical tradition. Whoever is chosen – and I could name many – the questioner can all the time find fault and be dismissive.

For me, it's all about whiteness and masculinity, their influence on the creation of musical foundations and who gets to define the abstract concept of greatness. The point shouldn’t be necessarily to search out alternative composers who could never live as much as the arbitrary and unrealistic standards that Beethoven supposedly embodies.

To be clear, this shouldn’t be about “cancelling” Beethoven. Instead, it’s about recognizing that there have been countless others who were no less great than these celebrated white male heroes.

“Cancel culture” is most frequently utilized by the fitting as a cudgel against those like me who wish to have adult conversations about our troubled racist past.

And there isn’t a doubt concerning the anti-Blackness of American music curricula.

Shift priorities

The short version of my argument may be summarized grammatically: as a general migration from the definite article “the” to the indefinite article “a”. Whatever was “the” foundation for music and music education is now simply becoming “a” foundation.

Are Chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach “the” basis for studying harmony and music theory or just certainly one of many? And is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony “the” standard for such symphonies or simply “a” standard?

This grammatical shift has caused panic amongst conservative voices. But what happens in music simply reflects what happens in society as a complete, be it in science, politics, justice or popular culture.

For my part, I welcome rethinking our shared musical foundations and might consider no higher composer than Beethoven – and his fascinating Ninth Symphony – as a start line for creating recent musical foundations.

The heights they reach have turn out to be comical, two golfers taking up their respective sports with such dominance that it's hard to assume – a minimum of for this moment – that anyone could beat them.

Nelly Korda just won her fifth straight start, ending with a significant, the Chevron Championship. Scottie Scheffler has just won 4 of 5 starts with a Masters in the center. The number 1s in the boys's and girls's worlds are not any longer just the perfect players of their sport. They turn out to be the perfect of all time. It's gotten to the purpose where Scheffler was jokingly asked this week in Hilton Head if the 2 were competing.

“I don't know, man,” he joked, “I think if it's a competition, she's pretty much beaten me right now.” Five wins in a row. She had that T16 at first of the yr that was just terrible. I can’t imagine she did that.”

And with their great runs has come a fun little trend: Who can post probably the most ridiculous, impressive stats or notes to quantify how incredible their golf was in 2024?

“Best five weeks since then.”

“I’ve won the most strokes since then.”

It's gotten so extreme and entertaining that we decided to compile a listing of probably the most impressive and meaningful notes from Scheffler and Korda's historic runs.

1. In their last 10 combined starts, Korda and Scheffler have beaten 1,163 golfers, per Monday Q Info. Only one golfer hit. Stephen Jaeger avoided a playoff and beat Scheffler by one shot on the Houston Open after his putt on 18 missed. For Korda, it’s the primary time since Annika Sorsenstam (2004, 2005) that somebody has won five consecutive LPGA events. Scheffler's WW-T2 WW run is just the fifth series of 5 or more T2s within the last 30 years. Tiger Woods did it eight times in a row and on one other occasion seven times in a row. Scheffler matched Vijay Singh's 2004 run.

2. Korda and Scheffler became the second pair of world No. 1s in men's and girls's golf to win major tournaments in consecutive weeks (for the reason that inception of the Rolex Women's World Golf Ranking). According to Tiger and Lorena Ochoa, this was achieved in consecutive weeks on the Women's British Open and the 2007 PGA Championship Contributor Justin Ray.

3. In the last 42 days, Scheffler has earned $16.3 million. That's the second-most earnings in a PGA Tour season, and he's done it in only five events. That means Ted Scott, Scheffler's caddy, made about $1.78 million this yr, putting him at No. 45 on the 2024 PGA Tour money list, ahead of Rory McIlroy.

Scheffler is chasing his own record. He earned $21.04 million last season.

4. It's not only Scheffler's victories. These are his two years of historic consistency. Scheffler has finished in the highest three in 23 of his last 51 events, beating almost all the field 43 percent of the time. For reference, Xander Schauffele is the No. 2 player at DataGolf and one of the consistent players in men's skilled golf not named Scheffler. Schauffele's pre-RBC Heritage betting odds had him ending in the highest five 30 percent of the time. Scheffler ended up in the highest three almost one and a half times as quickly.

5. Scottie's lead on this planet rankings over No. 2 Rory McIlroy is larger than McIlroy's lead over No. 788 Tiger Woods. Scheffler has twice as many OWGR points as McIlroy, with 690 total points, a median of 15 points to McIlroy's 338 points, which corresponds to a median of seven.4.

The gap between world No. 1 Nelly Korda and world No. 2 Lilia Vu within the Rolex Women's Golf Rankings is similar because the gap between Vu and the 185th ranked player, Auston Kim.

6. Scheffler has twice as many rounds of 64 or lower (4) as rounds of even par (2) this season. Even par is his worst results of 2024 (Round 2 on the Houston Open and Masters). He hasn't shot over par since a 3-over 73 on the Tour Championship in August.

7. With her win on the Chevron Championship, Korda became the third LPGA player, joining Nancy Lopez (1978) and Sorenstam, to win five tournaments in five starts. After withdrawing from the LA Championship this week, Korda might be aiming for a record sixth victory on the Founders Cup (May 9-12 in Clifton, NJ).

eighth. No American golfer had won five tournaments in a single LPGA season since July Inkster in 1999. Korda had won just five tournaments in a row before May.

9. Korda leads the LPGA points race for the 2024 season with 2,702 CME Globe points. Lydia Ko is in second place and has earned lower than half of that. Korda has already collected enough points to complete third in each of the last two years.

10. The 25-year-old Korda became the youngest American player to win a second LPGA major since July Inkster (23) in 1984 (over Justin Ray). From 1984 to 2002, Inkster ultimately won seven. Meg Mallon is the one other American woman to achieve 4 majors within the twenty first century. Korda is halfway there.

The only excellent news for the remainder of the PGA and LPGA tours? Scheffler and Korda have decided to take this week off.

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