If you get your baseball news from the local paper, well, you're probably not getting as much news these days as you used to.

Of all the papers in the New York City metropolitan area, only two - the New York Post and the New York Daily News - plus The Athletic, the online sports-only publication owned by the New York Times, sent a reporter to Minnesota to cover the New York Yankees series against the Twins this week according to a post on X by Pat Borzi, a sports writer for Minn Post.

One of the biggest things we, as a society, have lost in the contraction of newspapers, magazines, and journalism in general over the past 30 or so years is that fewer and fewer inquisitive people are out there "figuring stuff out." Across the country, we had rooms full of curious people who would fan out across their communities, poking, prodding, asking "why?"

Why does the city need a new water main when the current main was just replaced 10 years ago?

Why does our county lack viable public transit options?

And for the sports-inclined, why did the coach/manager make this move or that move in the eighth inning or third quarter or 65th minute of last night's game?

These, of course, are questions best asked of the decision makers, but what if no one is there to ask them?

We, as a society, are finding this out the hard way, whether it is about a matter before the local sewer board or state legislature or why the local team is winning or losing or asking for public money to build a stadium.

Every Friday, I'll bring you a set of links to important sports journalism from around the U.S. and elsewhere that you may have missed, with some commentary. A lot of it will be about baseball, though occasionally, there will be a story from elsewhere in the sports world.

We'll start off this week with two great pieces from ProPublica.

The first, titled "The Rising Baseball Star, a Fatal Car Crash and the Fixer" by Gus Garcia-Roberts, tells the story of how a fixer arranged a payoff to the families of three people killed when Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz rear-ended the motorcycle they were riding six years ago. At the time, Cruz was a prospect who had played all of 35 games at the Double-A level. By arranging the payoffs to the victims' families, the fixer saved Cruz's career.

In "The Dominican Baseball Factory", Garcia-Roberts peels back the veneer on the predatory way coaches and money lenders glom on to Dominican boys with promising futures as baseball players. Roberts interviewed team executives, agents, scouts, and parents about the state of the baseball industry in the Dominican Republic, with one coach, Eddy Fontana, saying, "This is a system that is allowing corruption at all levels.”

The third piece, part of ProPublica's Paper Trail audio series, is "The Predatory Industry Behind MLB’s Dominican Superstar Pipeline". In it, Garica-Roberts discusses his investigation into the Dominican baseball industry with Jessica Lussenhop.

For Roberto Clemente Day, which Major League Baseball celebrated on Sept. 15, ESPN's Jorge Castillo wrote "On Roberto Clemente Day, MLB has a Puerto Rico problem," a piece which asked why Puerto Rico is no longer the gold mine for baseball talent that it once was. "For the first time since 1988, no Puerto Rican-born players were on either All-Star team. In the days leading up to the Midsummer Classic, just five players born in Puerto Rico were selected in the 2026 MLB draft, none of them before the 13th round," he wrote. At least part of the reason, he found, was the decision to include players from Puerto Rico in the Rule 4, or amateur, draft that MLB holds each year.

The Athletic's Emily Ohman took a look at the Women's Professional Baseball League, which just completed its first regular season at a single site in Springfield, Ill. Like many smaller-time sports startups, everyone has done a little bit of everything, with Ohman noting, "the WPBL’s small operations staff — and its players, who’ve helped with coaching, marketing, broadcasting and even groundskeeping — have been fully occupied, with most doing work outside their job descriptions to get the league off the ground."

Have you ever heard of the so-called "burnerverse"? It's something I vaguely heard of in passing from a younger reporter sitting nearby at the College World Series this summer. This past week, WIRED's EJ Dickson's deep dive into the human consequences of the burnerverse, titled "A College Girl Was Exploited on Camera. A Network of Anonymous Men Got to Work", details how Madeleine Kowalski, a student at the University of Florida, was victimized when videos of her engaging in sexual activity while intoxicated at an off-campus house spread like wildfire on social media, bouncing around the internet via posts from anonymous accounts. One of her alleged tormentors was Jacom Gomberg, a left-handed pitcher who pitched for the Gators for two seasons before transferring to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and then to Indiana University. She's suing Gomberg and two others in federal court in Florida.

If you were wondering what Ichiro Suzuki is up to, the 52-year-old is still playing baseball, just not like you'd think. Sofia Schwarzwalder of the Seattle Times had a short recap of Ichiro's 116-pitch shutout with nine strikeouts against a girl's all-star team at the Tokyo Dome. He also had two hits in the game, batting leadoff, as one would expect. The entire game is available on YouTube.

Finally, elsewhere in sports, tragedy hit the Arizona State ice hockey program when Matthew Mayich, a sixth-round pick of the St. Louis Blues in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft, collapsed during one of the team's first workouts of the year. The Aug. 20 workout, which took place outside on an 85-degree morning, involved intense calisthenics led by a former Green Beret. During the arduous workout, multiple players vomited and Mayich ultimately collapsed from the heat. Mayich, 21, is unconscious, in critical condition, and unlikely to recover according to his family's attorney.

The Athletic's Katie Strang, one of the best investigative reporters working in sports, along with Nathan Fenno and Adam Kilgore, detail how Sun Devils head coach Greg Powers perceived that his team was "soft" and sought to build a tougher culture.

Arizona State athletic director Graham Rossini told a radio show in the days after the incident hit the news that, “This is not an investigation where someone is suggesting something went wrong. We’re just reviewing the facts and understanding the scenario.” Powers and his staff are still coaching the team, which is preparing for their Oct. 2 season opener at Lindenwood.

If you read a story that you'd like to see highlighted here, feel free to email me at leif@worldbaseball.com.