Late Monday night, the Chicago Tribune reported that President Obama will designate a historic district on the south side of Chicago as a national monument.

The president will travel to Chicago next week to officially announce Pullman Historic District as a National Monument, according to the Tribune. The designation, which will be the President’s 14th under the Antiquities Act, could put the site under management of the National Park Service — a move supported by a large, bipartisan coalition of surrounding communities, businesses, members of Congress, and state and local leaders, including Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Kirk (R-IL), and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The country’s first planned industrial town, Pullman Historic District, became well known after a violent factory strike in 1894, which sparked an industry-wide strike and is now seen as a pivotal moment in the history of the labor and civil rights movements — leading to the creation of the first African American labor union. The site was determined to be of “national significance” by the National Park Service in 2013 and was identified as a “national treasure” last year by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“The people who are part of the Pullman legacy helped to shape America as we know it today. Pullman workers fought for fair labor conditions in the late 19th century and the Pullman porters helped advance America’s Civil Rights movement,” said Lynn McLure, Midwest Senior Director at the National Parks Conservation Association in a statement. “Thanks to the President, Pullman’s story will soon be remembered and recounted for the millions of people that visit America’s national parks each year.”

This isn’t so much a community as it is a marketing gimmick. It’s a bullshit title used to sell books and programs.

These books seek to “redefine what it really means to be an alpha male.” Really, it’s not just a bunch of cock-sure, arrogant and self-entitled assholes. It’s a gentleman. A leader. A strong and worthy man blah, blah, blah. They’re putting lipstick on a pig, trying to convince you that you’re either the leader of the pack, or you’re a beta who won’t get what you deserve in this life, and they pretty it up with all kinds of nice-sounding terminology and definitions, but at its core the idea of being an alpha male is bogus.

It’s built around the myth of the alpha male wolf, which is allegedly the strongest, most dominant member of the pack. He is the leader, the one who gets all the bitches (literally) and keeps the other males in their place. Or something.

But it’s based on bad science. Disregarding the fact that human males shouldn’t be attempting to model the behavior of what goes on in the animal kingdom in the first place, this isn’t what goes on in the animal kingdom. The whole concept of their being an alpha male leader of the wolf pack who fought his way to dominance has been debunked.

Once again, the Oakland Athletics are not featured on Sunday Night Baseball in its opening weeks, the Worldwide Leader preferring known ratings winners like the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Cardinals. This is not necessarily ESPN's fault, as the A's have had a few chances to appear on Sunday Night Baseball before their August appearance last year but either the A's or the visiting team declined, according to Sunday Night Baseball announcer Dan Schulman.

Last August's appearance at the Coliseum was the first time since 2005 that ESPN's Sunday night broadcast came to Oakland. The hard part in playing the game here is moving the game to the early evening on a Sunday. That time at the Coliseum tend to put the Sun directly into the eyes of outfielders, and draws inevitable discussions about shadows. Additionally, Sunday is almost certainly a getaway day for the road team, who may be returning to points east and would prefer not to compound the time zone change with late travel.

Lev Facher wrote about why he thought ESPN has been reluctant to come to Oakland when this story came out at this time last year:

The issue for me is less the practical implications - personally, I don't care all that much whether the A's are on Sunday Night Baseball - and more the repeatedly reinforced reality that Oakland and other small-market franchises play second fiddle to the big-name clubs. ESPN seems far more interested in generating impressive rankings than broadcasting compelling baseball of the highest possible quality. In today's world, I can't really say I blame them.

Adam Silver was at the Stephen Curry show in Oakland last night, and he had killer seats. It’s one of the perks of being commissioner.

He also went on the air on Comcast Sportsnet Bay Area and took some questions from fans posted for him on Facebook, with topics ranging from his basketball experience to expanding the NBA to Europe.

However, the most interesting answer was his to the question of if the NBA should change its playoff system and, rather than take the top eight in each conference, take the Top 16 teams and seed them regardless of conference. Here was his response (that part of the interview starts at the 5:05 mark on the video above).

“Ultimately we want to see your best teams in the playoffs. And there is an unbalance and a certain unfairness. There is a proposal (from one of the broadcasters)… where the division winners would all automatically go into the playoffs and then you’d seed the next 10 best teams. I think that’s the kind of proposal we need to look at. There are travel issues of course, but in this day in age every team of course has their own plane, travels charter. I don’t think the discussion should end there. And as I’ve said, my first year I was studying a lot of these issues and year 2 is time to take action. It’s something I’m going to look at closely with the competition committee. I do think it’s an area where we need to make a change.”